The publishers of the four volume-set, Heer Damodar, written by Muzaffar A Ghaffar, claim that the Within Reach series of the master works of Punjabi Sufi poetry is an attempt to bring the outstanding verses of major Punjabi Sufi poets to an English reading public.

The latest in this series is based on the story of Heer Ranjha. Muzaffar says that the origin of this tale is uncertain. Though references to Heer are found in Persian literature from the 13th century, it caught the imagination of the Punjabi public and Sufis from Shah Hussain (1538-1599) to Khawaja Ghulam Farid (1839-1901).

This fascination exists even today. Even filmmakers from the subcontinent have made many lovely movies based on this story. The best was a movie produced by Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.

Sufi saints have used the love of Heer and Ranjha symbolically or as a metaphor of love between man and God.

Muzaffar says that due to the lack of media in the past, this story had limited reach, relying on the oral tradition of transmission only, but with the present day improvement in literacy and media modes of transmission available at large, it has become the subject of an excellent research project and it was Muzaffar A Ghaffar who took it upon himself to carry out this magnanimous work; hence this voluminous and detailed magnum opus.

This work has appeared in four volumes, wherein the story of Heer Damodar has been written in different scripts by Muzaffar A Ghaffar.

It is not an easy task to document the oral tradition into Punjabi, written in the Arabic alphabet, and then translate it into the English and Gurmukhi languages. He must have spent many sleepless nights carrying out this work single-handedly.

It is amazing to look at the glossary provided at the end of each chapter, as it says a lot about this dedicated work. For example, the first word in the glossary is for stanza 1, line 1, Zaat: (drawn from jaat); suffix: tribe, caste, genus, species, breed (Page 28).

Notes add additional knowledge about the story. For example, about Stanza 70, it is said, “The scene now moves to the zeal and ardour of Noora’s forces. In a great rage they are psyching themselves with slogans of ‘Ali, Ali’. As the scene sinks in, the poet slips in comment: see how they come, see their carriage, see their procedure, their manner. Then he brings in a shipload of irony with an underlayer of an analogy: the speed of the legion is compared with the speeding of Noora’s boat going away from him. The legion ‘eats’ the journey, as was Noora’s boat gobbled by the Syaals. The legion of Noora is impetuous and spoiling for a clash. No one can water down or cool their resolve, their fervency. Six leagues pass and the legion are thirsty for blood.”

Muzaffar’s research also explores the time when the tale was said. He refers to Damodar’s clues such as chillum — water pipe — and says that tobacco was brought by the Portuguese in the 16th century. Another reference is that of Gurdas Guni’s reference of Heer in 1706. Damodar’s date of 1529 in the Bikrami Calendar, when Heer and Ranjha were united, works out to 1472 AD, which is long before the Mughals ruled.

Muzaffar questions whether Damodar deliberately doctored the date to remind us that this tale is make-believe. Or maybe the timing of this tale could be irrelevant.

This story is valid for all times to come Taking this opportunity, while going through the gigantic task of presenting Heer Damodar in various languages, Muzaffar has also gone into expressing his opinion on various domains of various genres of Sufi music and poetry.

For example, he says that most poets of the Punjabi Sufi tradition play with the sounds and meanings of the words simultaneously, using various tones and pitches of meaning. He adds that sometimes they purposefully build in paradoxes to enlarge their meaning or to reflect the psychological complexity of relationships.

Also “old” words sometimes deviate considerably in impact, connotation and denotation from their ‘original’ or etymological meaning.

As far as the kafi genre of verse is concerned, Muzaffar says that kafi is a song supposed to be sung. This reviewer would like to add here that most of the kafi sayers have also suggested a raag in which a particular kafi needed to be sung. Perhaps the reason was that the desired impact that a particular kafi needed to proffer was enhanced by the suggested raag in which that particular piece was to be crooned.

Regarding the works of Sufi saints, Muzaffar says that a Sufi is esoteric and aspires for and preserves to rid his adherents of egotism, greed, anger, lust and delusion, including self-delusion.

Often the Sufi way to do this is to singularly make one subservient to the order of nature or to the will of God.

The concept of wahdat ul wujood (unity of being) also took root in the minds of people as a reaction against the vertically rigid Hindu caste system that was negated by the Sufis.

They affirmed that acts of persistent piety by any individual would lead to spiritual fulfilment and salvation in this life (not the future one). This was one aspect of the path.

Coming back to the works being reviewed, Muzaffar says that he received encouragement to present the fast-paced screenplay of Heer Damodar due to his regular attendance of Najam Hussain Syed’s Sangat since 1989.

Muzaffar says that the editing of the texts, exploration of meanings and discussions in the Sangat are the foundation of his efforts made towards the Within Reach series of masterpieces of Sufi poetry; the latest among it being presenting the text in Nastaliq, Gurmukhi and Roman with an extensive glossary, poetic translation and line-by-line discourse.

This mammoth work must be commended.

The reviewer is based in Lahore and can be reached at doc_amjad@hotmail.com

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

By Nicholas Birch, *Sufism in Turkey: The Next Big Thing?* - Eurasia Net - New York, USATuesday, June 22, 2010

A pretty garden and a table laden with cheese, ham and good bread: a typical summer evening scene on the Prince's Islands, a popular haunt for wealthy Istanbul residents.

But the dozen or so people sitting around the table haven't come to exchange polite gossip. For the past four hours, they have been listening intently to a popular Sufi mystic discoursing on the love of God.

"Bring unity to your heart and you create a temple of Allah, do that and you feel an irrepressible desire to dance," says the man, holding up his arms like a whirling dervish, clicking his fingers.

The past five years have seen a huge surge in interest in Sufism among urban, secular-minded Turks. Almost every television channel now has a program about Islamic mysticism. In bookshops, only books peddling conspiracy theories outsell the primers in Islamic mysticism and the new translations of Ibn-i Arabi.

Interest in Sufism surged last year, when novelist Elif Safak, best known in the West for being put on trial in 2006 because one of her fictional characters allegedly "insulted Turkishness," published her new book about an American Jewish woman's discovery of Rumi, the 13th century founder of the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes.

Rumi, who was born in 1207 in what is now part of Tajikistan, spent most of his life in present-day Turkey. His teachings offer some of the best insight into Sufi practices ever written.

Brought out in the United States this spring, The 40 Rules of Love is one of the best selling novels in Turkey's history. With sales mounting above half a million, publishers even brought out a grey-jacketed version for male buyers too embarrassed to be seen holding the bright pink original edition.

In some ways, the wave of interest is surprising. In Turkey, since the founding of the Turkish Republic, official propaganda has presented mystical orders, or tarikat, as the main "reactionary" force opposed to secularism. Even today, many secular Turks respond to the word tarikat with a grimace of distaste.

Since the 1990s, however, secular fears have increasingly centered on political Islam. More and more, analysts argue, some strands of mysticism, including Sufism, are seen as a moderate alternative.

"For years, faced with Islamists telling them that people who did not pray five times a day were not Muslims, secular Turks would defend themselves by saying that the important thing was 'a clean heart,’" says journalist Murat Yalniz. "They find a similar message in Sufism."

A researcher on Sufism, Seyit Erkal says the new interest among the secular, urban group, often described as 'White Turks,' is a matter of image. "Islam in Turkey has long been presented as malign, dirty and primitive, and turning to religion is no easy affair for such [urbanized] people," he says. "What would you prefer? Beards, skull caps and dogmatism, or Rumi's slogan 'come, whoever you are?’"

Outlawed by the secular leaders of the Republic in 1925, mystical Islam never disappeared from Turkey. Arguably, it was the powerful, orthodox Nakshibendi mystical order that did most to turn Islam into the political force it is in Turkey today. From the 1960s on, though, Sufism faced increasing opposition from radical Islam, nourished by puritanical Salafi beliefs imported mainly from Egypt.

Islamist radicals consider the Sufi relationship between sheik and believer to be idolatrous, according to Ismail Kara, professor of Islamic thought at Marmara University in Istanbul. Like earlier generations of Islamist modernizers, they also saw mystical brotherhoods as one of the chief reasons why the Islamic world could not keep pace with the West.

"Islamism was a critique of Islamic history," Kara explains. "Islamists made a deliberate attempt to cut themselves off from traditions and the past. They saw tarikat [mystical orders] as obstructing their efforts to go back to the sources and start again."

Today, Islamist animosity is waning as younger Turkish Muslims increasingly question the correctness of reducing religion to a political ideology. "People have begun to ask what happened to the profound Islam of the Middle Ages," says Mahmut Erol Kilic, an expert on Sufism as Marmara University. "People have begun to ask how a culture which produced Avicenna, Ibn-i Arabi, Mevlana and Yunus Emre could have become so narrow."

Sufi leaders say that tolerance of the more heterodox sects has extended even to the Justice and Development Party [AKP] government, whose leaders, when young, were influenced by radical Islamism.

Even a decade ago, discussing the culture of tarikat on Turkish television was almost impossible, says Cemalnur Sargur, head of one branch of the Rifa'i sect, and Turkey's only female sheik. Today, she hosts two weekly television programs, including one on state television.

"Some say they are bigots, but mysticism is something that this government understands, and has opened the way for," she says.

But not everybody is happy about the increasing visibility of Sufism. Many Muslim intellectuals object to the way in which the Mevlevi brotherhood in particular has been turned into a marketing tool for Turkey's tourist board, its white-robed dervishes whirling in front of crowds of westerners sipping beer.

Elif Safak's 40 Rules of Love sparked a huge and occasionally vicious debate. Left-leaning critics accused her advocating passive fatalism in the face of increasing social inequality and injustice. Pointing out that she wrote her novel in English first, before having it translated into Turkish, Muslim intellectuals accused her of molding Sufi thought to suit a Western audience.

The novel does not "just hollow out our shared values, but dumps modernity's crudest and most specious beliefs into the hole," prominent Muslim intellectual Ducane Cundioglu complained in the Islamic daily Yeni Safak. "This Sufi literature is New Age ... kitsch."

Researcher Seyit Erkal thinks Cundioglu has a point. Secular Turks' interest in Sufism, he points out, really only took off after UNESCO proclaimed the Mevlevi sema, or whirling ceremony, a World Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2005. In honor of Rumi's 800th birthday, UNESCO also declared 2007 the Year of Mevlana and Tolerance.

"This is Sufism that comes from the West," Erkal says. "It is like a Turk drinking his first Turkish coffee in America."

Traditional Sufis would doubtless be horrified at what is going on in the garden on the Prince's Islands. At least two of those in attendance, Turks who studied in the United States, openly admit to being atheists. As the sun drops below the Marmara Sea, the host comes to the table carrying a bottle of Doluca Moskado, a pricey local white wine.

The man at the head of the table calls a halt to intricate discussions of the qualities of different Sufi saints, and holds up a wine glass. "The squalid life is not for the Sufi," he says. "The Sufi is a gourmet, a master of the art of living."

Adamant that there can be no Islamic mysticism without an acceptance of the foundations of Islam, the Koran, the Sunnah and religious law, or sharia, Cemalnur Sargur nonetheless shrugs her shoulders at such heterodoxy.

"There are a lot of wrong roads on the road to the Truth, and those who realize they are on the wrong road quickly find the right one," she says.

After Elif Safak's book came out, she adds, she received hundreds of telephone calls from people saying that they wanted to know more about Rumi's companion, Shems-e Tabrizi, one of the main figures in the novel.

"The mere fact of mentioning Shems' name in this world is an act of grace," she says.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Ustad Shujaat Hussain Khan, celebrated sitar maestro, talks about his debut as a film music composer

Referred to as the greatest North Indian classical musician of his generation, Ustad Shujaat Hussain Khan is indeed a master of folk music and poetry.

Belonging to the Imdad Khan gharana of the sitar, he belongs to the seventh generation of musicians in family that boasts some of the greatest names in Hindustani music.

He is, without a doubt, a celebrated personality in the foreign arena with almost 50 musical releases and various laurels conferred on him by many Indian and international organisations.

And now the master steps into the Indian film industry as the music composer of the upcoming Hindi movie Mr Singh Mrs. Mehta.

Excerpts from a conversation with the maestro:

Can you tell us about the songs of the movie?

The movie has five ghazals, all very beautiful and soul-touching. Throughout my life, I have never been allowed to present the things that I associate with. I have never been asked to present what I am. This movie has given me chance to do so and the first two or three songs, especially, are in every sense, a part f my soul. I personally feel that the words and the tune have come together in every song, making the songs all the more beautiful.

Tell us about the singers associated with the songs of the movie

I have sung a song “Ae Khuda”. Besides this, there is a song sung by Roop Kumar Rathod. Also, Shreya Ghosal and K.K. have sung two versions of the same song. We have focused on different characterisation of each and every song. I feel that the music should be the base of the story and it should have the ability to tell the whole story on its own.

You are known for a unique voice suited for both folk music as well as poetry. So, do the songs of the movie have a mixture of both?

Absolutely, the songs do contain both the elements. Besides these two, there are elements of Geet, Ghazal and Sufi as well.

“Mr. Singh Mrs. Mehta” is a story based in London. Given that you had to fit in classical music, were you ever in two minds?

Never. This was never an issue since everyone involved with the movie had a clear outlook that the story was about Indian people. The thinking and the ideology is purely Indian. Hence, there was never a thought of being in two minds.

Nowadays, the phenomenon of ‘Rock Sufi' is in vogue. What it would be your take on that?

Some people with a hardcore approach may denounce that trend. But, I, for one would say that no music is bad as such. It is the extent to which that music touches your soul which makes it good or bad for you.

Elements of modernity are bound to come in with the advent of time. But, anything that is done to the music with a good intent is always welcome.

You are a celebrated artist in the foreign arena and now, you have made your Bollywood debut as well. So, what is the next step?

I am on the verge of finishing an album with Asha Bhosle in which the two of us are composing. There is one composition from my son as well. It is slated for a July release.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

A young seeker named Cat Stevens ''picked up a couple of very important strands of the mysterious truth'' during his last tour of Australia in 1974.

Within two years they would lead him to a new faith and a new name - Yusuf Islam - and out of the music business for three decades.

In one of the most gently persuasive voices of the peace/love generation, the singer recalls a pair of random meetings with lingering wonder.

''She was a tall lady, 60 years old. Her name was Hestia Lovejoy and she turned me on to numerology. My next record was Numbers, as a direct result of that,'' he says. ''Another interesting thing was a book with a velvet cover that was given to me, a book of Rumi's poems. That was my first introduction to Sufism and that was quite important.''

Yusuf's retirement from music in 1976 was a sudden departure to fans, but the London-born Steven Georgiou maintains that his conversion to Islam was the culmination of a gradual discovery.

The assertion is borne out in the lyrics of old songs such as The Road to Find Out, from his landmark Tea for the Tillerman album of 1970, one of many classics he has enjoyed rediscovering since picking up his discarded guitar in 2002.

''It's amazing how seamless the process has been,'' he says. ''But you know, life is continuous. Each album represents a stage in my pathway of life.''

Yusuf weathered controversies after the fatwa against the British author Salman Rushdie in 1989. He also found himself briefly barred from the US in 2004 in a case of mistaken identity. Today he largely distances himself from a media seeking to cast him in the role of a political spokesman for Islam.

''I've been asked many questions in the past and to be honest, I'm not very successful at being a politician,'' he says. ''However, as a poet, as a singer, and as a spiritual person, I find lots of ways, I think, of fixing things.''

Yusuf is touring Australia for the first time in 36 years with his son, Yoriyos, whose '60s-style blues-rock band, Noxshi, is supporting on all dates. They perform tonight and on Wednesday at Sydney Entertainment Centre.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Indian choir Malhaar will perform a musical combining Sufi music, theatre and art this weekend.

Residents of Dubai with an ear for the unusual are in for a treat this Dubai Summer Surprises with Rooh-e-Ishq, a musical that combines Sufi music, theatre and art being held this weekend.

It is being performed by Malhaar, an Indian music choir in the UAE in association with Theatrewallas, a local theatre group, and Indian celebrity musicians - Gulam Ali and Shailesh Bhagawat also taking to the stage.

Rooh-e-Ishq, which roughly translates as "in love with the soul", will follow the birth of Sufism and its journey across the world through the ages.

For the uninitiated, Sufism is the mystical dimension of Islam in which Muslims seek to find divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. They generally do this by shunning all worldly pleasures and devoting themselves to God. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a Sufi. The Sufi movement has spanned several continents and cultures over a millennium and sufis composed songs in devotion to God in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu and a dozen other languages.

Rooh-e-Ishq brings together the region's dancing dervishes and the qawwals (group singers) of Punjab. It features the life and works of four master Sufis of all time, Jalaluddin Rumi, Amir Khusro, Bulleh Shah and Kabir.

Jogiraj Sikidar, founder director of Malhaar, told Emirates Business: "I was exposed to Sufi music right from my childhood when I was living in Silchar, in Assam, as on many mornings I would be woken up by the sounds of a wandering minstrel singing Sufi songs.

"Then when I went to Delhi to do my graduation my interest in Sufi music deepened further as there I was exposed to Sufi music at the tomb of Amir Khusro.

"That's the time when I realised the depth of Sufi music and how it is still relevant. I decided that I would one day do a show that would present Sufi music in a contemporary form so that today's generation can connect with it. So when I set up Malhaar I decided that this was the time to do it and this show is the result of months of research and hard work."

The musical will unravel the mystical world of Sufism through three powerful media – music, theatre and poetry – and is divided into five segments.

The first four segments are a theatrical life sketch followed by a musical performance based on the four master Sufis. In the final segment, Malhaar will perform contemporary Sufi music from Indian film and pop albums. Each segment will be introduced by an anchor, who will also recite popular Sufi couplets.

Talking about the paintings that will be prominently displayed in the theatre during the show, Sikidar said: "We asked artists from the UAE and India to make paintings based on their understanding and representation of the Sufi masters and their music."

He said the paintings would be displayed in the theatre and form part of the backdrop on the stage.

"Later, in true Sufi tradition of charity, two of the paintings that have been made by Shrabani Brahmachary, a well-known artist from Delhi, will be auctioned and the proceeds from it will go to Manzil, the school for children with special needs."

The show will be held at 6.30pm tomorrow [today, Friday, June 25] at the Centrepoint Auditorium, Ductac, Mall of the Emirates. Tickets are priced at Dh50 and are available at the box-office and Gazebo and Kamat restaurants. For more, e-mail malhaar.choir@gmail.com.

By Ed Lake, *Cultural calendar: Sufi history lesson through music* - The National - Abu Dhabi, UAESaturday, June 19, 2010

The strangest of this week’s art events comes to the Mall of the Emirates on Friday.

I read the press release about it and was, I admit, perplexed. Not that it was badly written, not at all. Merely, the things it described were quite hard to imagine.

So I phoned up the event organiser and asked him what was going on. He spoke almost uninterruptedly for 15 minutes, clarifying certain details, sketching the history of his group and enlarging on the attractions laid out in the press release. The more I heard, the less I understood. I thanked him and hung up, and then fretted about how to write these next few paragraphs.

Allow me to attempt a description of the “unique Asian musical” Rooh-e-Ishq.

It arose out of rehearsals held by Malhaar, which claims to be the UAE’s first Indian music choir. The show will relate the history of Sufism, both in song and in theatrical interludes recounting the lives of four Sufi saints, Jalalud’din Rumi, Amir Khusro, Bulleh Shah and Kabir. There will also be poetry and paintings, the latter of which will have been created especially.

In all, 45 artists and performers will contribute to the show.

The choir employs western harmonies but, according to its director Jogiraj Sikidar, “Indian texture”.

The choir’s repertoire touches on both qawwali and Bollywood styles. There will also be an oudist and a player of an Indian instrument whose name I missed but which, I understand, is heard quite rarely these days.

The performance will last for three hours. Patience is clearly a prerequisite.

[Picture: Shams of Tabriz as portrayed in a 1500 painting in a page of a copy of Rumi's poem dedicated to Shams. BNF Paris. Photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi]

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Novelist Elif Shafak grew up with two very different models of Turkish motherhood – her modern, working, educated mother and her traditional, religious grandmother

Three months before her first child was born, Elif Shafak, Turkey's leading female novelist, found herself facing prosecution and a potential three-year prison sentence. Her crime? She was accused of insulting "Turkishness" in her novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, through a fictional character whose ancestors had been murdered in the Armenian genocide.

On the day of the trial, protesters inside and outside the courtroom jostled and slapped at the defendants – dozens of Turkish writers and intellectuals – shouting and throwing objects at them. "More disturbing than the actual trial," Shafak said at the time. "Very aggressive, very provocative."

The case was eventually dropped, only to be taken to a higher court. The trial took place a few months later. Shafak had just given birth and was not present. After a 40-minute hearing, she was acquitted.

After the case, Shafak fell into a postnatal depression that lasted for several months. Were the two linked, the legal ordeal and the postnatal depression? "I don't want to make too much of it," is all she will say, four years on. "The book was very well received, sold well and was read by a wide range of people – people who wouldn't normally break bread together. I gave readings, talks, book signings all over Turkey. People in England see only a very small part of the picture. Turkey is a complex, diverse society."

Shafak, 38, is clearly more comfortable finding other explanations for her postnatal depression. Her heart-shaped face, with its planed cheekbones and startling green eyes, becomes more animated as we move away from the topic of the trial. "I had led a very nomadic life before having children. I hadn't lived in the same house for more than a year, 18 months, my whole life. I'd lived out of suitcases. I lived an unconventional life. If I was writing a novel, it would become the most important thing in my life. I would stay in that story day and night, completely isolated from everything for several months. And then when it was finished, I'd emerge into the world once more. But that pattern of working is very difficult with children. Becoming a mother, I had to learn to become settled. But you can't ignore a book. It needs your full attention. If I ignore my novel for two days and I got back to it, she is cross with me. When I had my children, I had to change the rhythm of my writing."

She stops for a moment, then adds with wry understatement: "There was a period of panic."

Shafak is not the first novelist to struggle with the challenge of combining a writing life with a mothering life. As the novelist Bell Hooks put it: "One cannot have a family, even a non-traditional one, and be a committed artist without tremendous struggle."

Virginia Woolf's husband forbade her to have children at all, fearing that the combination of writing and raising children would destroy her already fragile mental equilibrium.

Out of her own panic, Shafak produced a powerful autobiographical novel about her experience of postnatal depression. "I called the book Black Milk because it shows that mother's milk is not always as white and spotless as society likes to think it is. And because out of that depression I was able to get inspiration. Out of that black milk I was able to develop some sort of ink."

Shafak's children are now three and two. "Motherhood has not slowed me up as a writer, but it has changed me," she says. In retrospect, she does not view the experience of postnatal depression negatively. "The first illusion of depression is that you are the only one who has ever been through it. The second illusion is that it will go on for ever. But depression is a golden opportunity to reassemble the pieces when they are broken. It made me look inside. And what I found inside me were six women – all quarrelling! Black Milk is their voices, arguing it out, making the transition from hierarchy to democracy."

Does the idealisation of motherhood make it harder for women in Turkey than here in Britain? Shafak ponders the question. "Motherhood is so sacred in Turkey. It must be perfect. There is no room for ups and downs."

But she also thinks that the experience is different for each generation, and that perhaps the adjustment to motherhood is harder for women with intellectual and professional aspirations.

"I grew up with two different models of womanhood: that of my mother, who was an educated working woman, very cultured and modern, and that of my grandmother, who was much more traditional, superstitious, religious. Women like my grandmother were, perhaps, better prepared for motherhood in some ways. Her generation would protect new mothers from jinn [a spirit in Muslim belief who could assume animal or human form] by not leaving them alone for a moment in the first month. For my mother's generation, it was harder. There was no room in their mental framework for the ups and downs. For my generation, too, motherhood has to be perfect."

Her husband, Eyüp Can, a journalist, has been a vital support. They share a commitment to an egalitarian marriage, and his involvement with the children is essential to her ability to maintain a balance between writing and bringing up children. Next year, she and Eyüp will be moving to the UK for several months while she works on her new book. They will share the childcare and her husband will commute between London and Istanbul. "If there were any competition between us, it wouldn't work. He is very unusual for a Turkish man."

Shafak's childhood was similarly peripatetic and international. Due to the demands of her mother's job, they were often physically apart, in different cities and different countries. Much of her childhood was spent living with her grandmother in Ankara. She was born in Strasbourg in 1971; her father was a philosopher and her mother a diplomat. Her parents separated soon after the birth and she was brought up by her mother.

"It took me a long time to overcome my anger towards my father for his absence. A very long time. Fury is a stimulating force, but in the long run, it is a destructive one. It's not good for the soul. I had a lot of fears in relation to my father, but the thing about fear is that if you exaggerate it, you start to believe it."

She is now on good terms with her father and her half-brothers by his second marriage. Her relationship with her mother is very close. "To be a woman diplomat and a single parent was not easy for my mother, but she is a very independent woman, very determined. The mother-daughter relationship is not composed of one colour only, but we are very good friends. There is huge love between us."

Already something of a celebrity in Turkey, Shafak is having an increasing impact on the international literary scene. She has a reputation for blending western and eastern elements in her fiction, and in her journalism she is a bold and outspoken critic of her country's politics. She is seen by many critics and readers as an exciting, innovative, politically challenging writer. Besides having won many literary awards in Turkey and abroad, she has a large and devoted readership.

"If people like your novels in Turkey, they take you into their hearts," she says. "My readers write to me about their personal lives: they invite me to their weddings; to share their most intimate joys and sorrows. I have a very strong connection with my readers. It is rewarding and very humbling."

Perhaps, too, her readers love her because she writes about things that touch so directly on their lives. Her new novel, The Forty Rules of Love, already a bestseller in Turkey, is concerned with questions of motherhood and selfhood. Ella Rubenstein, the middle-aged American housewife and mother at the heart of the novel, is unhappily married to an unfaithful and neglectful husband, and in thrall to the needs of her children. Her own life and needs and aspirations have been lost along the way, as has her belief in love.

Shafak has taken a significant risk in The Forty Rules of Love in making Ella a rather dull character, certainly at the start of the novel – the kind of woman you wouldn't want to have coffee with because you know she'll just drone on about the kids. Shafak agrees, but defends the decision. "I didn't want Ella to be extraordinary. I wanted her to be someone you could recognise instantly, whether you're a Muslim woman in a headscarf in Ankara or a Jewish woman in Boston. I wanted to write about the capacity for transformation even in uninspiring material."

If love is one of Shafak's themes, Sufism is the other. She first became interested in Sufism as a college student in her early 20s, and it has reverberated through her writing and her life ever since. In The Forty Rules of Love it takes centre stage as both theme and subject matter. The contemporary love story between Ella and Aziz, a Scottish Sufi novelist, is interwoven with a historical narrative set in 13th-century Turkey about Rumi, the Sufi poet, and his mentor, the mystic and dervish Shams of Tabriz.

"The more you read about Sufism, the more you have to listen. In time I became emotionally attached. When I was younger I wasn't interested in understanding the world. I only wanted to change it, through feminism or nihilism or environmentalism. But the more I read about Sufism the more I unlearned. Because that is what Sufism does to you, it makes you erase what you know, what you are so sure of. And then start thinking again. Not with your mind this time, but with your heart."

Sufism, motherhood, writing: Shafak feels she has found a way to align these three vital elements in her life.

"Writing is very lonely work. A novelist for years lives in an imaginary world, creating characters, killing them. It is very self-centred. It's a job that requires a big ego. But in Sufism there is no hierarchy. No one is superior to anyone else. Motherhood has changed me. Each book changes me and makes me a different person."

The Forty Rules of Love, by Elif Shafak, is published by Viking, £12.99. To order a copy for £9.99 (including UK mainland p&p), go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The labyrinthine Arab-style medina of Fez, Morocco’s historical capital of trade, culture and religious life, was a remarkable space for the 16th Annual World Sacred Music Festival June 4-13.

The expansive and diverse event, with about 60 performances, took place in the walled city's public spaces, traditional palaces and places of worship.

The festival, originally started by Moroccan anthropologist Faouzi Skalli in 1994, seems to have spawned a growing worldwide trend of sacred music festivals, including the World Festival of Sacred Music in Los Angeles every three years.

Performers included Amadou and Mariam, a blind couple from Mali who have become international stars, and Jordi Savall, a Catalan composer who is a major figure in early music.

There also was an emphasis on providing space for endangered traditions. “Some of these artists are seemingly rejected by globalization, and their traditions are sometimes in danger of disappearing,” said Alain Weber, the artistic director of the festival.

“Sacred” took many forms, from the mystic Sufi poetry of Ustad Gholam Hossain of Afghanistan to the energetic rapping of Casa Crew from Morocco. Groups associated with religious institutions, such as the Baghdad-Jerusalem group, played traditional Jewish music of Baghdad. At the same time, there were numerous performances that are not typically described as “sacred.”

Casa Crew, a hip-hop group from Casablanca who rap in the Moroccan dialect of Arabic and use samplings of traditional Arabic music, profess that rap can be spiritual.

“When you have a universal message, you can’t always communicate it directly, but the melodies that accompany the message, that [engross you], give a sense of spirituality,” says group member Simo, who goes by the moniker MASTA FLOW. He acknowledged that “sometimes it’s like ‘pump it up,’ it’s not always spiritual, but rap can be sacred like Gnawa [a form of religious music practiced in North Africa] or any other kind of music.”

For Kiya Tbassian, who is trained in Persian music but whose group Constantinople currently is working in collaboration with Corsican polyphonic a cappella group Barbara Fortuna, “it is the process of trying to find one’s identity through music that is sacred.” Tbassian’s group Constantinople played an ensemble with Barbara Fortuna on Monday night, which was a fascinating fusion of Iranian art music with the polyphonic a cappella style; an Iranian sitar mixing with Christian Renaissance-style voices.

Parvathy Baul (pictured), a North Indian mystic, held an audience transfixed with her “meditation in motion” of chanting, whirling, stepping and drumming. “The highest order of art and human expression is through music, and the body is the flute, and the wind is blowing, and He is the one who is playing through me,” she said.

For the Bauls Order, who are inspired by Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, the sacred is found through the act of performance.

The highly varied pricing of the concerts dramatically affected the type of crowd in attendance. The most expensive concerts were those in the evening at Bab Makina — the monumental gateway of the Royal Palace. With ticket prices of up to $55, these concerts were prohibitively expensive for many, resulting in empty sections on several nights. On Sunday night, the lively and athletic Drum Masters of Burundi played to a low-energy audience of tourists and Moroccan elites at Bab Makina.

Two blocks from the Palace gate, the plaza in front of Bab Boujloud (a major gate to the old walled city) teemed with crowds at free concerts every night.

On Sunday, Moroccan popular singer Najat Atabou had a young and boisterous crowd of about 5,000 dancing at the free concert. About half of the concerts were free, including Sufi music performances each night.

For many attendees Jordi Savall’s musical epic presenting the history of Jerusalem epitomized the message of harmony at the festival. The full orchestra included Israeli, Palestinian, Armenian and Greek musicians playing traditional instruments. The stunning and elaborate piece included poetry and religious texts from the many groups who have inhabited Jerusalem.

Chris Colucci, a sound designer and composer from Philadelphia, called this concert the “spirit of the festival,” which emphasized the “profound ways in which we’re all the same.”

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Jews, Christians and Muslims prayed together as regional Sufi leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bukhari was laid to rest in his home in Old City Jerusalem.

On June 1 he passed away at the age of 61, after a long struggle with heart disease. Rabbis, Muslim and Druze sheiks, Christian clerics and lay people of diverse faiths paid respects at the mourning tent, which received visitors for three days.

Sheikh Bukhari was the head of the mystical Naqshabandi Holy Land Sufi Order and Uzbek community. In his lifetime, he became deeply engaged in interfaith peace activities, including co-founding Jerusalem Peacemakers, and participating in the Interfaith Coordinating Council in Israel, Interfaith Encounter Association and the Sulha Peace Project.

Some have said Sheikh Bukhari’s heart disease was due to the stresses of peace work. His teachings and practices had put him in danger on several occasions.

The Sufi leader believed in interfaith unity and nonviolent approaches to resolving conflicts. When faced with the reality of violence in the Middle East, he found inspiration in Islamic law and tradition, as well as in the writings of Gandhi, King and Mandela.

When asked when his interfaith peace work began, he recalled a phone call he received in 1999 from the Vatican. A Cardinal requested his participation in the upcoming millennium celebration. The plan was for a Catholic Cardinal, Rabbi David Rosen and the Sufi leader to lead a peace prayer on the Mount of Olives. It was this occasion that had Sheikh Bukhari become more seriously involved in interfaith efforts in the Holy Land.

In his own words, “What sets these peace efforts apart from the rest of Israel’s peace camp is a focus on religion, rather than politics, as the basis for dialogue and negotiation. Mainstream activists are largely secular.”

He had a vision that religion would win the peace: “It’s not religions that want peace…The people who believe in God, the religious people, the people who really want to implement God’s word, they can make the peace, they can make the changes, because if a politician stands and speaks, many people listen to him, but how many people agree with him? Very little. But when the religious leader who stands and speaks, they listen to him and they agree with him. The religious leader has a stronger role than a politician.”

On this topic he told one reporter in 2008:

Religious leaders have to take a role to work with the community on the grassroots, to help the people to find that violence will not solve our problem. The only way we do it by acting as a family, remembering that God created us to live here in peace and harmony, not to kill each other.

And for the last 9 years now I’ve been doing that, and we formed an organization called Jerusalem Peacemaker. We make activities to bring peoples together to sit and find a common language that we all love the Holy Land we all love the spirit, so we have to do something about it.

I had the chance to meet Sheikh Bukhari in Melbourne this past December. Thousands of people had descended on the Australian city for the Parliament of World Religions. People of various faith traditions from across the globe attended to learn from one another.

At the Parliament, Bukhari was on a panel with others from the Middle East to discuss ‘Religion, Conflict and Peace Building: The Case of Israel-WestBank-Gaza.’ The panelist told stories of how peacemakers in the Holy Land were working together to bridge the gulf between peoples.

Besides attending the panel discussion, I encountered the Sheikh in the press room as he was interviewed by Rachel Kohn, Australia’s leading journalist on religion. The two had met previously in his Jerusalem home in 2008. In that discussion, he outlines the history of his home and his family’s burial process.

We have our own graveyard in the garden here. So we never leave home, so we’re born here and we die here, and we’re buried here. So we have in my garden a small cemetery, its only for the family members, so we all get a chance to be buried inside the house and that’s one of the privileges we have that nobody else does…

It is a big room, about 4 by 4 under the ground and we lay them next to each other and by the time for the one who’s dead, he becomes just bones, so we move the bones aside and we lay next to it…

Sheikh Bukhari was thus wrapped in a white shroud, and buried in same grave as that of his grandfather, great-grandfather and the line of family sheikhs dating back to the 17th century.

His family had first migrated from Bukhara to Jerusalem in 1616 to establish a center to teach Sufism. Their home was built on the Via Dolorosa, the road that Jesus walked from the place of Pontius Pilate’s sentencing to his crucifixion.

He was a direct descendent of the Sunni scholar Imam Muhammad Ismail al-Bukhari of Bukhara, the ninth-century author of the hadith al-bukhari a collecter oral tradition that contains guidance about Islamic tradition and religious law and practice.

Bukhari’s family played a role in the political history of Jerusalem during the Ottoman era, when they were charged with overseeing the Islamic holy places in the Holy Land, including in Lebanon.

In his interview with Rachel Kohn, he had spoken of the many holy places in Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount for Christians, and the Wailing Wall of the Jews. Such sites are sources of contention in Israel, however Bukhari once said:

The place is not relevant to the worshipping, because God says ‘I gave you the whole earth to worship me on it.’ So any place, if I pray here in my house or anybody prays anywhere else, if I go to the church or the synagogue and I pray there, God will not say ‘No, you step out, you don’t belong here.’

…The place, it’s not relevant to the worshipping. If we are really sincere about God our holy places are the same…So the holy places, belong to God, not to us. …..If the mosque was here or there, or the temple was here or there, this is our own issue, but God says anywhere you pray, I’ll accept it. I accept it, so let’s not pinpoint issues that make complications…

Sheikh Bukhari is survived by a wife and six children, whose families are scattered across Jerusalem, Gaza and the US.

Monday, June 21, 2010

By Staff Reporter, *Premiere of ‘Dara’ at PNCA today* - The News International - Karachi, Pakistan

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Islamabad: The Ajoka Theatre Productions in collaboration with Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) will stage the premiere of the play ‘Dara’ here from June 17 to 19.

Based on the life and times of Mughal Prince Dara Shikoh, Ajoka’s new play is about the less-known but extremely dramatic and moving story of Dara Shikoh, eldest son of Emperor Shahjahan, who was imprisoned and executed by his younger brother Aurangzeb.

Dara was not only a crown prince, but also a poet, a painter and a Sufi. He wanted to build on the vision of Akbar the Great and bring the ruling Muslim elite closer to the local religions.

His search for the truth and shared teachings of all major religions is reflected in his scholarly works such as ‘Sakeena-tul-Aulia’, ‘Safina-tul-Aulia’ and ‘Majma-ul-Bahrain.’

The play also explores the existential conflict between Dara the crown prince, the Sufi and the poet.

The violent and devastating struggle between brothers Dara and Aurangzeb, the decisive role played by their sisters Jahan Ara and Roshan Ara, the spiritual challenge posed by the Sufi Sarmad to the authority of the ‘muftis’ and ‘qazis’ of the empire and the growing discontent among the masses are elements which make ‘Dara’ a gripping and powerful play.

Like all Ajoka’s plays, ‘Dara’ has a very relevant message for our contemporary times, said the organisers.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

On June 15 every year, a fair is held in Rajasthan near the India-Pakistan border in memory of the star-crossed lovers - Laila and Majnu - who are believed to be buried in a tomb there.

The legend of these two lovers has also influenced Sufi literature where the tale is a prototype of divine love - the beloved Laila is actually god or a divine lover worshipped by Majnu who is literally possessed by her love.

But in western Rajasthan, the story is symbolic of the composite culture of the sub continent. So in this fair, hundreds of people collect to ask for the blessing of the two lovers and the gift of true love in their lives.

"I heard there was a fair here so I came to see. It is said that whatever you ask for here, you get it," said a girl visiting the fair.

Before the Kargil conflict this shrine was also open to Pakistani visitors.

There are many variations to the legend of Laila and Majnu. In a version popular here Laila is forcibly married off to another man. Her husband challenges Majnu but as soon as his sword pierces Majnu's heart, it is Laila who dies.

The tomb of Laila and Majnu is a major attraction in these parts, therefore it's not surprising that even one of the BSF [Border Security Force] posts on this border is called the Majnu post.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

New York and London have been treated in recent seasons to major exhibitions of Chola bronzes. A thousand years ago, sculptors in southern India began creating exquisite devotional figures—most often depictions of the Hindu god Shiva and his consort Parvati.

The bronzes are palpably sensuous and, even now, undimmed by centuries of worship that involves draping the figures in silks and garlands; anointing them in butter, curds, milk and sandalwood paste; and parading them through villages and towns to show the gods their domain.

Among the most sublime art that the hand of man has produced, the bronzes remain part of a living religious tradition.

It turns out that they are part of still-living artistic tradition, too. In "Nine Lives," William Dalrymple introduces us to Srikanda Stpathy, a 35th-generation bronze caster directly descended from the stone carvers who first learned the art of bronze casting in the region of India called Tamil Nadu. The casting tradition has kept his family busy for 700 years, and his workshop has "a backlog of orders that would take at least a year to clear."

Such are the joys of "Nine Lives," in which Mr. Dalrymple profiles nine Indians and through them the variety of religions that thrive in our reportedly homogenized world. His subjects include a Jain nun, a Theyyam dancer, a sacred prostitute, a singer of ancient epics, a Sufi "lady fakir," a Tibetan monk who renounced his vows to fight the Chinese invaders and now lives in exile, a Tantric worshipper of the ferocious goddess Tara, and a blind Baul (wandering singer).

Mr. Dalrymple lets them all speak directly about their lives and beliefs, and he sketches along the way both their individual narratives and the history and literature of their faiths.

Discussing the meaning of Srikanda's work, Mr. Dalrymple ends up musing on the place of sex in Hinduism—noting that the Judeo- Christian Scriptures begin with the creation of light while Hinduism "begins its myth with the creation of Skama—sexual desire: in the beginning was desire, and desire was with God, and desire was God."

He cites a fourth-century poet-prince who tried to discern whether asceticism or sensuality was the true path to God: "Tell us decisively which we ought to attend upon," the poet says in one of his verses. "The sloping sides of the mountain in the wilderness? Or the buttocks of a woman abounding in passion?" In a later chapter in "Nine Lives," the Baul singer, part of a mystical Hindu tradition, seems to offer an answer: "Never plunge into the river of lust / For you will not reach the shore. / It is a river without banks, / Where typhoons rage, / And the current is strong."

Mr. Dalrymple calls "Nine Lives" a travel book, but it is more an episodic look at religion in the age of globalization. Turning away from the country's most pressing religious story—the battles between Hindus and Muslims that have shaped Indian politics for the past two decades as the secularism into which the country was born in 1947 has eroded—Mr. Dalrymple conveys the details of everyday worship and fulfills that hoary cliché of giving voice to the voiceless. Each of the figures he profiles exults in his faith, but most also fear the future.

As a child, Lal Peri twice escaped the violence engendered by the birth of Bangladesh and has since found sanctuary in the temple of Lal Shabhaz Qalander, a Sufi saint who preached religious tolerance in the 13th century. But she knows that this syncretic worship, and Sufism in general, is threatened by the exponential rise of fundamentalist Islam, supported by the Gulf states and the madrassa school system they have built throughout Pakistan.

Mr. Dalrymple goes to see the head of a new madrassa in the town, who speaks quite openly of his desire to destroy the Sufi temple and any variant type of Islam.

As close as Mr. Dalrymple comes to anger is in describing the dynamiting by Pakistani Taliban of a small shrine to the 17th-century Pashto poet-saint Rahman Baba at the foot of the Khyber Pass. Mr. Dalrymple had visited it often in the late 1980s while covering the war in Afghanistan and reveled in the way refugees gathered there to take solace in the poetry and music of the Sufis.

Modernity is another threat. The Theyyam dancer, Hari Das, works as both a well digger and a jail guard to make ends meet. The high point of his year is the two months when he travels to festivals incarnating deities and monsters as part of the Theyyam rites.

In an intense ritualist dance, the actors—dressed in fantastic and weighty costumes—are possessed by the Hindu deities they are incarnating. Yet as much as Hari Das wants his sons to master the physically demanding art, he knows that they can find better jobs through education.

It is the same for the sculptor Srikanda, whose son is interested in computers. As pained as he is by the thought of sundering a 700-year tradition, he acknowledges: "Our work here is very hard. Computer work is not so difficult, and it pays much more. . . . After all, as my son says, this is the age of computers. And as much as I might want otherwise, I can hardly tell him this is the age of the bronze caster."

It is, though, the age for writers like Mr. Dalrymple who fall in with the rhythms and languages of foreign lands. "Nine Lives" shows us lives hidden almost entirely from Western readers.

Another recent book, Alice Albinia's "Empires of the Indus," presents the cultural richness of the still fought-over lands around the Indus River—which flows from Tibet through India and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea—and manages to humanize Pakistan.

Friday, June 18, 2010

New Delhi/Ajmer: Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday sent a 'chaddar' to the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moin-ud-din Chishti in Rajasthan's Ajmer city.

The cloth is to be offered at the shrine by Congress party leaders on the occasion of Urs.

'Urs' marks the death anniversary of Moin-ud-din Chishti, who is popularly referred to as 'Gharib Nawaz', or the 'messiah of the poor'.

Scores of devotees from all over India converge the shrine on the occasion.

Chishti, who is believed to have been born in 1142 AD, preached tolerance and unity of all religions. In 1236 AD, the saint entered his cell to pray in seclusion for six days, at the end of which he died. Since then Urs has been celebrated for six days every year.

It is believed that praying at the tomb of the saint fulfils a person's wishes. Devotees visiting the shrine offer fresh flowers as a symbol of their devotion. Some even go up to the extent of offering large amounts of money and expensive jewels.

Devotional music and recitations from Chishti's own works and other Sufi saints are presented in traditional Qawwali (chorus singing) style.

The annual event culminates with readings from the holy Quran and special prayers.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

As I wait in a crowded square at one of the entrances into the old town of Fes in Morocco for musicians to take the stage after evening prayers, the scene before me is as far removed as it can be from quarrels of the world beyond the Atlas Mountains.

I have come to Fes to take in the sights and sounds of the most fascinating city in Morocco, likely in all of Africa.

The Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, held annually at this time, is unique as musicians and poets from around the globe gather here to celebrate the language of the heart that transcends any and all divisions among the children of Adam.

Fes was founded by Moulay Idris, a descendant of Muhammad, around 789. His son Moulay Idris II extended the town during his reign from 807 to 828, and he is buried in the centre of Fes inside a mosque remarkable for its interior art work and exquisite calligraphy in marble.

The old town of Fes is a labyrinth of narrow streets, shops and homes where, except for electricity and its working facilities, one is immediately transported back to the times of Maimonides, the revered Jewish sage from the 12th century, and earlier.

Maimonides and his family found refuge in Fes after leaving behind trouble-infested Cordoba, as did generations of families later — Arabs, Berbers and Jews, from al-Andalus (Spain). They came to Fes and added to its fame and fortune.

Commerce and philosophy were joined together in Fes. Here stands one of the grandest mosques in Africa, al-Quaraouiyine, and it houses one of the oldest universities in the world, opened in 859, where Ibn Rushd (Averroes) lectured.

Fes is also the centre of Sufism — the path of mystics in Islam that connects with all faith traditions through the language of the heart — and the gateway to Islam in sub-Saharan Africa.

The mosque and shrine of Shaykh Ahmed Tijani is a short walking distance from al-Quaraouiyine, and this is traditionally the first stop for pilgrims to Mecca from Senegal, Mali, Mauritania and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.

The Shaykh established the hugely popular Sufi order, al-Tijaniyya, in Africa. When I entered the shrine to pay respect to him and perform my mid-afternoon prayers, I found myself surrounded by a congregation of black Africans in robes of vibrant colours visiting to honour their beloved Sufi master.

In my travels through Muslim countries, visiting homes and sharing meals in such remote places as Ajmer in India or Samarkand and Kashgar in Central Asia, I have unfailingly noticed the quiet dignity of people in sharp contrast with the hateful politics of Islamists.

I find the dignity of people in Fes, consistent with the city’s history, appears as a rebuke to Muslims across mountains, deserts and seas who have turned their hearts from being an oasis of tranquility into a snake-pit of bigotry and violence.

The musicians return and a singer from Mali fills the air with his love song to Abraham and Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, and the people around me respond in rhythm to the music while the starry night unfolds above me in an absolutely enchanting Fes.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The old woman is whirling into a blur. Qawwals are singing. It’s a joyous mood. Tonight, the sufi shrine of Hazrat Shah Farhad in Bageecha Pirji, near Sadar Bazaar, is lit up with lamps. It is Shah Farhad’s Urs, his 286th death anniversary. He died in 1723 AD.

In Sufism, the death of a saint is celebrated as the occasion when his soul gets united with that of his beloved, the God. Urs means ‘wedding’ in Arabic.

Shah Farhad was born in Delhi but grew up in Burhanpur in central India where his father was a governor. As a child, he got attached to a mystic who initiated him into an offshoot of the Chishti order. Shah Farhad later settled in Delhi where he acquired a following. This evening’s crowd is a proof of his popularity.

Every morning before opening their stores, the traders in the neighbourhood come to the dargah to get their shop keys blessed by Shah Farhad. Childless women come asking for children. Students come to get their books blessed.

The shrine is also a place where you come to get rid of djinns, the mysterious beings who, according to Islamic beliefs, are made of smokeless fire. These creatures trap vulnerable people in their spell and make their life miserable. The ‘possessed’ men and women then visit fakeers and shrines to become normal again.

Some come to the dargah of Shah Farhad, also known as the master of djinns. Clinging to the grills, the tormented scream and shiver in agony, asking the djinns to leave. If they become free, they become life long followers of the saint.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

For the last week, al Shabaab has launched daily attacks in Mogadishu, using gunmen and mortars. As a result there are 50-100 casualties on some days, most of them civilians caught in the crossfire.

In the last three years, since al Shabaab, and other Islamic radical groups began their attempts to conquer the country, over 20,000 have died and 1.5 million people have become refugees.

Somalia has become the most violent and lawless place on the planet. While this has generally aided the pirates operating off the north coast, the major seafaring nations have organized an anti-piracy force that has increasingly hindered the pirates. The use of warships and aircraft, and new tactics (emphasizing more aircraft patrols and preemptive attacks on mother ships) has sharply reduced the attacks this year.

Although there are a lot of weapons coming into the country, there are not enough meet demand. Thus the prices have more than tripled in the last few months. Ethiopia has been supplying Sufi militias, who often operate near the Ethiopian border. The U.S. and EU have been supplying the TG [Transitional Government], while Iran, via Eritrea, has been supplying the Islamic radical militias.

The TG troops are the most lavishly equipped, and many of these soldiers desert and sell their weapons on the open market. But there are more people seeking arms. Iran has an easier time getting cash to al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam (because of Israeli attacks on Iranian arms ships and pressure on Eritrea to halt this gunrunning). So Islamic radicals tends to be the biggest customer for weapons from TG deserters.

Kenya keeps moving more troops and police to their Somali border, as Islamic radical militias, and bandits, on the other side continue to get more aggressive.

June 9, 2010: A roadside bomb went off in Mogadishu, killing at least twelve and wounded over twenty. Most of these casualties were civilians, although the target was Transitional Government (TG) soldiers (five of whom died).

June 8, 2010: In central Somalia, 320 kilometers north of Mogadishu, hundreds of al Shabaab gunmen were defeated after they attacked the Sufi controlled villages of Dhusamareb and Marergur. The al Shabaab fighters were forced to retreat, abandoning many weapons, vehicles and large quantities of ammunition. The Sufi militias, who are allied with the TG, were seen celebrating.

Three ministers of the Transitional Government have resigned, further paralyzing the fragile coalition. Cooperation is not a popular practice in Somalia.

A Somali militant group allied with the country's weak U.N.-backed transitional federal government says it has killed and captured fighters from the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militia during clashes in central Somalia.

Analysts say the casualties, reportedly inflicted by the Sufi group Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jamma'a, could signal the start of a series of significant clashes in the region.

Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jamma'a spokesman Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Abu Yusuf said the group had attacked al-Shabab fighters in and around the central town of Dhusamareb. He said in this operation, four al-Shabab militia troops were killed, and one captured. He said his group reports no casualties.

Located on a major highway linking Somalia's capital Mogadishu with the northern autonomous region of Puntland, Dhusamareb is seen as a strategically important town in the battle for central Somalia.

In January, al Shabab said it had retreated from Dhusamareb just days after its forces had seized control of the town. Ahlu-Sunna has been attacking al-Shabab positions since taking up arms against the group in 2008. In March, Ahlu-Sunna signed an agreement with Somalia's transitional federal government to provide support in the fight against al-Shabab in return for senior positions within the government.

Analysts say two planes carrying weapons and ammunitions to be used against al-Shabab were delivered to Ahlu-Sunna in Dhusarmareb last week.

Earlier this week, locals told the United Nations humanitarian news service IRIN fresh fighting had broken out between the two sides. Eyewitnesses estimated around 5,000 families, or 30,000 people, had fled from Dhusarmareb and surrounding towns. Experts say it could signal the start of increased clashes across central Somalia.

International Crisis Group Horn of Africa Director E.J Hogendooen says both sides are mustering fighters in the region. "All indications, at least from the indications we've received, is that al-Shabab has also moved some of its forces into central Somalia so this may be the start of a fairly significant series of clashes between Alhu Sunna and al-Shabab," Hogendooen said.

Alhu-Sunna Wal-Jamma'a's public perception in Somalia has been marred by its links to Ethiopia, the country's traditional enemy. Addis Ababa reportedly helped the group negotiate a deal with the Somali government.

Washington: Rich cultural traditions like Sufi poetry that help foster values of tolerance and peaceful coexistence are truly reflective of the Pakistani nation and not its militancy-related problems that make the headlines of newspapers across the globe every day, Islamabad’s ambassador to Washington said on Tuesday.

“Pakistan is much more than the everyday headlines of newspapers published across the globe about its’ militancy-related issues. Pakistan represents 180 million people with their cultural diversity and aspirations for the future,” Ambassador Husain Haqqani said.

He was underlining the need to see Pakistan in its entirety - in contrast with the stereotyped, superficial portrayals of the country in parts of the international media - as he spoke to a gathering of Americans and Pakistanis at the country’s embassy.

The Pakistan embassy was hosting a performance by renowned qawwal Amjad Farid Sabri, son of the legendary Ghulam Farid Sabri.

“These traditions are part of our glorious cultural heritage. The democratic government is working to revive cultural traditions so that the world realises that a handful of extremists do not represent Pakistan. Rather it is the overwhelming majority who see the message of tolerance, love and peace in such traditions that symbolises what Pakistan is truly based on,” he said.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Egypt's Board of Sufi Orders has instructed its branches throughout the country to abide by new Endowment Ministry (Awqaf) regulations so as to allow them to continue performing their traditional zikr rituals.

"We want to make sure these rituals don't violate the sanctity of our mosques," said Endowments Minister Hamdy Zaqzouq.

The ministry set down nine conditions that Sufis must abide by in order to perform the ritual, including a ban on the use of megaphones and loudspeakers so as not to disturb others.

Supreme Sheikh of the Sufi Orders Abdel Hady el-Qasby said that the ministry's conditions were in line with Sufi ideology. "Those who violated the regulations in the past did not belong to acknowledged Sufi orders in the first place," he said.

The Sufi zikr ritual is performed to remind worshipers of God's benevolence towards man.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

By Suanshu Kurana, *Songs of the Mystics* - Indian Express -IndiaTuesday, June 8, 2010

Earlier this year film-maker and music composer Muzaffar Ali wowed the Delhi audience with his brainchild, Jahan-e-Khusrau — a three-day sufi music festival to commemorate the death anniversary of Sufi saint Hazrat Amir Khusrau.

Now, two more musical events in the city are set to acquaint the audience with the works of sufi stalwarts like Amir Khusrau, Rumi, Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti and Baba Bulleshah, on the occasion of World Music Day on June 19.

The first is Shaam-e-Sukoon, a festival being organised by the city-based Swar Dharohar. The two-day festival will open on June 19 with a performance by Delhi-based Niyaz Sabri, a third generation sufi singer.

“Sufi music is more like world music today. Everybody likes and appreciates it. Since Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti was one of the greatest sufi mystics of the country, most of my performance will have qalams by him,” says Sabri.

This will be followed by a session of sufiana qalams by Zafar Hayat Niyaz.

The second day of Shaam-e-Sukoon will feature ghazal singers Zulfi Khan and Yateesh Acharya.

The other event, the Sada-e-Sufi, organised by Husan Ara Trust at India Habitat Centre is scheduled for June 20. It will celebrate the life and works of the 13th century Muslim poet Mawlana Jalal-ud-Din Balkhi-Rumi with a performance by renowned Hyderabad-based qawwal Adil Hussain and his troupe.

Friday, June 11, 2010

The magic of legendary Sufi singers of Punjab — Wadali Brothers (Puranchand Wadali and Pyarelal Wadali) — left the audience spellbound at the International Summer Festival at The Ridge in Shimla that came to an end on Sunday.

Though Lakhwinder got only half-an-hour’s slot at the festival, the fifth-generation star of the Wadali family did not disappoint his fans and Sufi music lovers.

“In this limited time, I did try my best to give you (audience) a feel of what Wadali brothers are known for. If I come here next time, I will sing for hours,” he said.

“It was a real treat to listen to the young Wadali,” said Horticulture Minister Narender Bragta, who was the chief guest on the concluding day.

Lakhwinder started with his father’s popular devotional song Tu Mane Ya Na Mane... and then switched over to other Punjab folk numbers.

The festival was held this time in collaboration with Shimla Doordarshan for a live telecast.Om Guri Dutt Sharma, Station Director, Doordarshan (Shimla), said: “The Shimla summer festival has a glorious history and several big names have performed here since 1960s. Shimla DD feels proud to have been a partner.”

There were complaints this year as no big-budget singers from Bollywood were invited to perform. International figures were also missing.

To this, Deputy Commissioner J S Rana said: “We made a serious effort to promote new talent — whether local or national. Had more funds been made available by the government, or we got sponsors, we would have certainly invited big-budget performers. Yet, with limited resources at our disposal, the festival has been successful.”

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Iranian editor Seyyed-Ali Mirafzali has found a collection of 205 new quatrains composed by the 12th-century Sufi Persian poet, Sanai Ghaznavi.

“I edited Sanai quatrains based on 25 manuscripts and after the work was finished I realized that some 205 of his quatrains had not been published so far,” Mirafzali told Mehr News Agency.

The 41-year-old editor claims his edition to be the most complete and accurate compared to the ones published so far. “The new edition is composed of 740 quatrains, including the newly found compositions, which make it more complete than the one edited by Mohammad-Taqi Modarres-Razavi and known as the most complete edition published so far,” he explained.

Mirafzali said the new quatrains were edited in consultation with Iranian poet and literary critic Mohammad-Reza Shafiei Kadkani and will be published along with the rest of the quatrains in the near future.

Sanai is best-known for using various verse forms including ode, sonnet and rhymed couplet to express different aspects of Sufism.

Sanai inspired many great Persian poets who lived after him such as Mowlavi, Attar ad Nezami.

The Walled Garden of Truth is Sanai's best-known work which contains 10,000 couplets.

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Salafism or Wahabism, also referred to as cult of Ahl-e-Hadith is supposed to be directly opposed to the sufi strain of Islam. In India too the two sects are opposed to each other though here, due to democratic secular polity, nature of conflict is not very aggravated or violent. The partisans of both the ideologies apart, it confuses many Muslims as to what are their differences about and why they condemn each other?

The word salafi means what pertains to our forefathers – aslaf i.e. we have strayed from the pure Islam practiced by our early ancestors and must be restored. According to the ideologues of Salafi Islam, our practices should be based only on Qur’an and hadith, not on any fiqhi mazhab or school of jurisprudence like Hanafi, Shafi’i etc. Hence they are also known as Ahl-e-Hadith as they base all their juristic decisions on Qur’an and hadith.

The Salafis strongly condemn Sufi Islam as corrupt and destructive of all that Islam stands for. To visit Sufi mausoleums and to pray and invoke intercession (shafa’at) is totally against Qur’an and Islamic teachings. Only Allah’s name could be invoked, not of anyone else not even of the Prophet (PBUH), let alone of any sufi saint. One cannot pray even on the Prophet’s grave. One cannot even recite the Qur’an facing the Prophet’s grave. To invoke intercession, according to the Salafis, amounts to shirk (associating partners with Allah which is great sin).

Those who are supporters of Sufi Islam totally disagree with these views. They argue intercession cannot amount to shirk as intercession does not elevate a person from human to deistic status, human being remains human being though one who has achieved perfection (insane-e-kamil) through ones spiritual perfection. They quote hadith in their support. In hadith literature, according to the supporters of Sufi Islam, the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) has been described as Shafi’ al-mudhnibin i.e. intercessor on behalf of sinners.

Here in this essay it is not our intention to support this or that ideology which has torn the Muslim world apart and caused much challenges, even violence. Our intention is to understand both the strains and understand the factors which gave rise to these ideologies among Muslims. It is certainly not easy to reconcile the two but understanding the underlying factors can probably pave the way for better appreciation of both the schools of thought.

The Sufi Islam

Before we understand the origin of Wahabi or Salafi Islam we must first understand the origins of Sufi Islam and its need for Muslims. One also has to understand why the Sufi Islam acquired tremendous popularity in the Islamic world and remained dominant for centuries. The Salafi Islam originated in Najd area of Hijaz now named after the Saudi dynasty Saudi Arabia as an ideology as late as 18th century.

What are reasons of tremendous popularity of Sufi Islam? Let us remember religion, and any religion for that matter, basically fulfills two human needs – moral and spiritual. Most of the great religions of the world have originated in the times of great moral degradation. When greed, crass materialism, war, pillage, loot, plunder and ruthless exploitation begins to rule, a reformer, a prophet and great moral thinker appears on the scene and either through divine revelation or his own thoughts tries to restore morality in the society.

Such a person does not normally rely on rational thought alone but also anchors his teachings deep into his inner spiritual resources. All great religious founders resorted to what one can call deep encounter with ones own self and searched for truth deep inside. It is this encounter with ones own self or solitude which provides resource for abiding truth and that appeals to the people. Mere rational thought, however philosophical or exalted it may be, will not have deeper emotional impact on people.

Rational thought, it may be noted, has its own significance and performs great social functions and ensures human development and progress and so there is no question of lessening its importance. But it appeals to the intellectuals and engineers and architects of society and scientific thought. However, either they are averse to or simply not interested in what is human deeper emotional self and its potential.

They are explorers of macrocosm, not microcosm. Their interest is in what is out there, not what is in here. The Sufis, mystics and bhaktas explore their inner self and for them self is more important than the whole universe as universe is much more important to intellectuals and philosopher and scientists than the inner self. The Sufis and mystics maintain that one who has deeper knowledge of oneself (self) can have knowledge of God (Rabb). God cannot be understood only rationally but through deeper spiritual resources.

Spiritualism brings deeper conviction and inner solace and certitude what Qur’an calls iman (faith). It needs both heart and mind to believe and hence, according to the Qur’an, those whose hearts are sealed can never believe. Belief has to be grounded in deeper spiritual forces and superficial rationality cannot achieve deeper conviction. The Sufis and mystics spend years fighting great impediments encountered in themselves and perfect their nafs through minimizing their desires and removing all traces of greed controlling acquisitive instincts.

Then they emerge as what we can call as role model for the masses of people in the society and gather around them large number of followers. One more social function of religion is to provide solace to troubled hearts and minds. No amount of material wealth can buy this inner solace and these Sufis become source of inner solace for these troubled souls.

The Sufis and mystics use rich cultural resources to achieve this purpose. Poetry and its powerful symbolic language on one hand, and, music, on the other, provide spiritual tools which have great emotional appeal. Also, Sufis assimilate different cultural values and express themselves through cultural values and language of the region they situate themselves in. This again greatly enhances their appeal to the masses of people.

Thus many great sufis happened to be from Iran and hence they wrote in Persian. The Persian poetry was greatly enriched by the Sufis of Iran. They did not hesitate to use symbols like wine, cup of wine or sip bearer of wine saqi for spiritual purposes giving it entirely new meaning and significance. Also, the Sufis spoke language of love, not of power. It is language of love which has emotional appeal, not language of power which reflects ambition and exploitation.

Thus it is rich cultural resources and language of love which tremendously enhances appeal of sufi Islam. For example what Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi could achieve through his Mathnavia Ma’navi could not have been achieved through hundreds of toms written by great scholars in terms of emotional appeal. The Mathnavi was even called Qur’an in Pehlavi language (i.e. Persian).

It is also important to note that Jalaluddin Rumi was as great a scholar of Arabic as of Persian. Arabic was language of Islamic learning whereas Persian was language of culture and administration and Maulana Rum chose Persian for writing his Mathnavi precisely because it was language of the people and their cultural expressions were in that language and it was this powerful cultural tool that made Mathnavi popular over ages.

The Indian Sufis, on the other hand, also wrote either in Persian or even in regional languages like Brij, Avadhi, Khari Boli, Bengali, Marathi and in Urdu and used symbolism of local culture. Also, since they spoke language of love there was no rejection of the other, only acceptance. But ideological puritans, on the other hand, speak language of rejection, one who is not purist, is not acceptable. Thus they narrow down their circle of followers. One who does not believe in their ideology is not a believer and hence a kafir.

Also, the Sufis, through assimilation of local cultural symbols, even rituals made it easy for the local masses not only to flock to them but also convert to Islam which became much nearer to their way of life. In India, the rituals around sufi mausoleums bear close resemblance to those of a Hindu shrine replacing the idol with a sufi grave. Conversion should not result in cultural rupture. Culture is much closer to ones heart than any intellectual belief.

There is another dimension which one has to take into account for origin, development and popularity of sufi Islam. Islam did not remain confined to Arabian Peninsula with scarce cultural resources but spread to far and wide with highly developed cultures and civilizations like those of Iran and India, besides others. While Islam impacted on these cultures it was also in turn impacted by them and new composite strains of cultures developed in these regions. Both Iran and India developed highly enriched composite cultures due to entry of Islam.

It was this composite and enriched culture which using all native and foreign cultural resources Sufis adopted unhesitatingly. Thus it made easier for the people of those regional composite cultures to identify themselves with Sufis and their creative endeavors like poetry, music and in some cases even dancing in trance. Mehfil-e-sama’ (the divine musical session) became an important institution in the sufi Islam. The ulama opposed it saying music is haram (prohibited) in Islam. However, for masses it was important means to be drawn towards Sufis. Amir Khusro, Nizamuddin Awliya’s disciple made very rich contributions to the world of sufi music.

Salafi Islam

The Sufi Islam began, according to some scholars right from the Prophet’s (PBUH) time as some of his companions, drawing inspiration from him, indulged in rigorous spiritual practices and ahl-e-suffa (those who sat on a place outside the Prophet’s house and used to practice very simple life). Some people consider them as the first Sufis. Sufis were subsequently divided in several schools of thought one of which is known as Wahdat al-Wujud school. This school was founded by Muhiyuddin Ibn Arabi, a Spanish Sufi of great eminence.

This school which believes in One Real Being and that all others are His manifestations, was most open and liberal and hence became very popular in India and attracted maximum number of following. It produced great Sufi saints who were highly revered by Hindus and Muslims alike. They were truly spiritual and role models for many. Among Arab countries too, Muhiyuddin Ibn Arabi and Sufis of his school were quite popular.

However, after decline of power and onslaught of western colonialism, Sufism lost its original thrust and vigour and degenerated into superstitious practices, amulets and charms and Sufis also encouraged that. Such degeneration resulted in inaction and total submission to whosoever was in authority. Masses flocked to Sufis or their graves not for any spiritual inspiration but for mere solace and seeking solution to their problems through charms and amulets or mere invocation of sufi saints.

This degeneration created its own reaction. This reaction came in its strongest form from Najd which was predominantly Bedouin area with simple style of life with no complex cultural traditions like in Iran or India. Salafi movement was founded by Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792) of Najd. The name Wahabi movement draws from his name. He was educated in Madina. He was quite studious and acquired his expertise in hadith from well known Muhaddith (scholar of hadith) Sheikh Muhammad Hayat Sindhi.

It is said once Abdul Wahhab was standing near the chamber of the Prophet and people were indulging in what according to Sheikh Hayat Sindhi was bid’at (innovative and false practices). This was, it is said, the turning point in Sheikh Abdul Wahhab’s mind. He decided to purify Islam of all these innovative practices and founded his movement. Some highlights of his movement was firstly tawhid in its purest form without any traces of shirk (association of others with Allah), opposition to taqlid (blind following of any authority), invocations of saints (one does not need invocation of any living or dead person to seek nearness to Allah or visiting dead sufis’ mausoleums and kissing their graves and praying there).

Thus it would be seen that Sheikh Abdul Wahhab tried to attempt ideological purity of Islam and such a purist Islam, it would be interesting to note can appeal more to desert Arabs which lacked rich and complex cultural traditions. It mainly spread only in these areas and could not attract followers in Iran, Central Asia, India and other parts which had such traditions.

One more factor is important in this respect and that is political. As we all know the colonial period had begun and the Arabs were under domination of Turks and the British had established its foothold over Egypt. There was power struggle in the air. Sheikh Muhammad Abdul Wahhab was acquiring popularity in the Najd region and could influence the local ruler of the region Amir Muhammad bin Saud and this gave political power to the movement. Thus religious appeal of Sheikh Abdul Wahhab and political power of the Saudi family made the Salafi movement a power to be reckoned with.

Slowly the Saudi power increased and it captured whole of Najd, the Karbala and even temporarily Mecca. This began to ring alarming bells in Turkey, Egypt and alerted the British that they may loose hold over the region. Political conspiracies began and Sheikh Abdul Wahab’s movement was labeled as Wahabi movement to give it a bad name. When a religious movement takes resort to political power it also has to face certain political consequences.

However, we do not want to go into political history of the movement, its defeats and victories, neither we want to pass any judgment on its religious merit or otherwise as our main aim is to attempt socio-religious roots of the movement and its appeal or otherwise. Salafi movement, as pointed out, did not arise with political ambitions but with a zeal for ideological purity. Sufism and its various practices were seen as a deviation from pure Islam and as a compromise with its concept of tawhid.

It should also be noted that zeal for ideological purity in any religion or political movement leads to extremism and denunciation of all those who do not agree with them. Also, concept of such purity appeals only to small number of people as in this complex world it is very difficult to ensure such purity. And ordinary people see no great need for such purity as their very existence demands compromises on every step.

Moreover such ideological purity and extremism in its advocacy, besides limiting its appeal, also makes it unsuitable for peasant and non-tribal cultures which tend to be much more complex, ritualistic and dependant on vagaries of nature. Islam could not escape the local hues and traditions of peasant cultures when it spread to these regions. Also, these regions produced much agricultural surplus extracted from peasants which in turn produced a leisurely class consuming this surplus which indulged in creating high culture, philosophy and abstract concepts.

Many Sufis were greatly attracted, like other Muslim intellectuals and philosophers by philosophy of neo-Platonism, and spiritual practices which helped them understand ones inner self. The Muslim ruling classes were engaged in extending and consolidating their rule and thus constantly engaged in warfare which created revulsion among those who were intensely religious.

Thus they withdrew themselves from political Islam and concentrated on spiritual Islam. Thus they became much more tolerant and open to other religions and cultural traditions. Salafis, on the other hand, reversed this trend, gave preference to political Islam and associated themselves with political ruler to survive. Rejection of others leads to isolation and isolation needs external props to survive and need for political support.

Should then hostility continue between Salafis and Sufis? I do not think such a course could be advisable. While the Salafis have to realize that total rejection leads nowhere and only to extremism, the advocates of Sufi Islam should understand that Sufism is much more than mere visiting graves and indulging in charms and amulets. Sufism is nothing if not intense religiosity and spiritualism.

The ideological purity of Salafism and tolerance and inclusiveness of Sufi Islam must be wedded together to make our world more livable. We live today in a multi-religious and multi-cultural world no matter where we live and exclusivistic trends would only lead to extremism. Peace and tolerance is possible only if we accept others rather than reject them. Inter-religious dialogue and understanding will ensure harmonious co-existence whereas extremism will bring nothing but peril for all of us.

King Abdullah has also realized this and has launched initiative to start inter-religious dialogue and organized one in Spain last year. It is a very welcome initiative. We must abandon old positions and adjust to our own realities without compromising of course on fundamental values and principles. Love, compassion and tolerance have enriched all cultures throughout human history and we need these values much more than before.

In India though there is no struggle for power between Barelvis (advocates of Sufi Islam) and Deobandis (advocates of Salafi Islam) but polemics duel continue between them. This leads us nowhere. Coexistence, while respecting each others positions and doctrines, is the only way out. India is a secular democracy and allows full religious freedom and every Muslim sect could subscribe to its own doctrines and dogmas and hence there is no need to denounce the other.

All Muslims, however, must unite to denounce the terrorist and al-Qaeda violence. Killing innocent people is most irreligious act. Only vested interests and those in pursuit of power would encourage such acts, never a religious person for whom religion is a great resource for peace and security of everyone. Let us look inside us and see are we really religious in this sense?

The publishers of the four volume-set, Heer Damodar, written by Muzaffar A Ghaffar, claim that the Within Reach series of the master works of Punjabi Sufi poetry is an attempt to bring the outstanding verses of major Punjabi Sufi poets to an English reading public.

The latest in this series is based on the story of Heer Ranjha. Muzaffar says that the origin of this tale is uncertain. Though references to Heer are found in Persian literature from the 13th century, it caught the imagination of the Punjabi public and Sufis from Shah Hussain (1538-1599) to Khawaja Ghulam Farid (1839-1901).

This fascination exists even today. Even filmmakers from the subcontinent have made many lovely movies based on this story. The best was a movie produced by Khawaja Khurshid Anwar.

Sufi saints have used the love of Heer and Ranjha symbolically or as a metaphor of love between man and God.

Muzaffar says that due to the lack of media in the past, this story had limited reach, relying on the oral tradition of transmission only, but with the present day improvement in literacy and media modes of transmission available at large, it has become the subject of an excellent research project and it was Muzaffar A Ghaffar who took it upon himself to carry out this magnanimous work; hence this voluminous and detailed magnum opus.

This work has appeared in four volumes, wherein the story of Heer Damodar has been written in different scripts by Muzaffar A Ghaffar.

It is not an easy task to document the oral tradition into Punjabi, written in the Arabic alphabet, and then translate it into the English and Gurmukhi languages. He must have spent many sleepless nights carrying out this work single-handedly.

It is amazing to look at the glossary provided at the end of each chapter, as it says a lot about this dedicated work. For example, the first word in the glossary is for stanza 1, line 1, Zaat: (drawn from jaat); suffix: tribe, caste, genus, species, breed (Page 28).

Notes add additional knowledge about the story. For example, about Stanza 70, it is said, “The scene now moves to the zeal and ardour of Noora’s forces. In a great rage they are psyching themselves with slogans of ‘Ali, Ali’. As the scene sinks in, the poet slips in comment: see how they come, see their carriage, see their procedure, their manner. Then he brings in a shipload of irony with an underlayer of an analogy: the speed of the legion is compared with the speeding of Noora’s boat going away from him. The legion ‘eats’ the journey, as was Noora’s boat gobbled by the Syaals. The legion of Noora is impetuous and spoiling for a clash. No one can water down or cool their resolve, their fervency. Six leagues pass and the legion are thirsty for blood.”

Muzaffar’s research also explores the time when the tale was said. He refers to Damodar’s clues such as chillum — water pipe — and says that tobacco was brought by the Portuguese in the 16th century. Another reference is that of Gurdas Guni’s reference of Heer in 1706. Damodar’s date of 1529 in the Bikrami Calendar, when Heer and Ranjha were united, works out to 1472 AD, which is long before the Mughals ruled.

Muzaffar questions whether Damodar deliberately doctored the date to remind us that this tale is make-believe. Or maybe the timing of this tale could be irrelevant.

This story is valid for all times to come Taking this opportunity, while going through the gigantic task of presenting Heer Damodar in various languages, Muzaffar has also gone into expressing his opinion on various domains of various genres of Sufi music and poetry.

For example, he says that most poets of the Punjabi Sufi tradition play with the sounds and meanings of the words simultaneously, using various tones and pitches of meaning. He adds that sometimes they purposefully build in paradoxes to enlarge their meaning or to reflect the psychological complexity of relationships.

Also “old” words sometimes deviate considerably in impact, connotation and denotation from their ‘original’ or etymological meaning.

As far as the kafi genre of verse is concerned, Muzaffar says that kafi is a song supposed to be sung. This reviewer would like to add here that most of the kafi sayers have also suggested a raag in which a particular kafi needed to be sung. Perhaps the reason was that the desired impact that a particular kafi needed to proffer was enhanced by the suggested raag in which that particular piece was to be crooned.

Regarding the works of Sufi saints, Muzaffar says that a Sufi is esoteric and aspires for and preserves to rid his adherents of egotism, greed, anger, lust and delusion, including self-delusion.

Often the Sufi way to do this is to singularly make one subservient to the order of nature or to the will of God.

The concept of wahdat ul wujood (unity of being) also took root in the minds of people as a reaction against the vertically rigid Hindu caste system that was negated by the Sufis.

They affirmed that acts of persistent piety by any individual would lead to spiritual fulfilment and salvation in this life (not the future one). This was one aspect of the path.

Coming back to the works being reviewed, Muzaffar says that he received encouragement to present the fast-paced screenplay of Heer Damodar due to his regular attendance of Najam Hussain Syed’s Sangat since 1989.

Muzaffar says that the editing of the texts, exploration of meanings and discussions in the Sangat are the foundation of his efforts made towards the Within Reach series of masterpieces of Sufi poetry; the latest among it being presenting the text in Nastaliq, Gurmukhi and Roman with an extensive glossary, poetic translation and line-by-line discourse.

This mammoth work must be commended.

The reviewer is based in Lahore and can be reached at doc_amjad@hotmail.com

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

By Nicholas Birch, *Sufism in Turkey: The Next Big Thing?* - Eurasia Net - New York, USATuesday, June 22, 2010

A pretty garden and a table laden with cheese, ham and good bread: a typical summer evening scene on the Prince's Islands, a popular haunt for wealthy Istanbul residents.

But the dozen or so people sitting around the table haven't come to exchange polite gossip. For the past four hours, they have been listening intently to a popular Sufi mystic discoursing on the love of God.

"Bring unity to your heart and you create a temple of Allah, do that and you feel an irrepressible desire to dance," says the man, holding up his arms like a whirling dervish, clicking his fingers.

The past five years have seen a huge surge in interest in Sufism among urban, secular-minded Turks. Almost every television channel now has a program about Islamic mysticism. In bookshops, only books peddling conspiracy theories outsell the primers in Islamic mysticism and the new translations of Ibn-i Arabi.

Interest in Sufism surged last year, when novelist Elif Safak, best known in the West for being put on trial in 2006 because one of her fictional characters allegedly "insulted Turkishness," published her new book about an American Jewish woman's discovery of Rumi, the 13th century founder of the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes.

Rumi, who was born in 1207 in what is now part of Tajikistan, spent most of his life in present-day Turkey. His teachings offer some of the best insight into Sufi practices ever written.

Brought out in the United States this spring, The 40 Rules of Love is one of the best selling novels in Turkey's history. With sales mounting above half a million, publishers even brought out a grey-jacketed version for male buyers too embarrassed to be seen holding the bright pink original edition.

In some ways, the wave of interest is surprising. In Turkey, since the founding of the Turkish Republic, official propaganda has presented mystical orders, or tarikat, as the main "reactionary" force opposed to secularism. Even today, many secular Turks respond to the word tarikat with a grimace of distaste.

Since the 1990s, however, secular fears have increasingly centered on political Islam. More and more, analysts argue, some strands of mysticism, including Sufism, are seen as a moderate alternative.

"For years, faced with Islamists telling them that people who did not pray five times a day were not Muslims, secular Turks would defend themselves by saying that the important thing was 'a clean heart,’" says journalist Murat Yalniz. "They find a similar message in Sufism."

A researcher on Sufism, Seyit Erkal says the new interest among the secular, urban group, often described as 'White Turks,' is a matter of image. "Islam in Turkey has long been presented as malign, dirty and primitive, and turning to religion is no easy affair for such [urbanized] people," he says. "What would you prefer? Beards, skull caps and dogmatism, or Rumi's slogan 'come, whoever you are?’"

Outlawed by the secular leaders of the Republic in 1925, mystical Islam never disappeared from Turkey. Arguably, it was the powerful, orthodox Nakshibendi mystical order that did most to turn Islam into the political force it is in Turkey today. From the 1960s on, though, Sufism faced increasing opposition from radical Islam, nourished by puritanical Salafi beliefs imported mainly from Egypt.

Islamist radicals consider the Sufi relationship between sheik and believer to be idolatrous, according to Ismail Kara, professor of Islamic thought at Marmara University in Istanbul. Like earlier generations of Islamist modernizers, they also saw mystical brotherhoods as one of the chief reasons why the Islamic world could not keep pace with the West.

"Islamism was a critique of Islamic history," Kara explains. "Islamists made a deliberate attempt to cut themselves off from traditions and the past. They saw tarikat [mystical orders] as obstructing their efforts to go back to the sources and start again."

Today, Islamist animosity is waning as younger Turkish Muslims increasingly question the correctness of reducing religion to a political ideology. "People have begun to ask what happened to the profound Islam of the Middle Ages," says Mahmut Erol Kilic, an expert on Sufism as Marmara University. "People have begun to ask how a culture which produced Avicenna, Ibn-i Arabi, Mevlana and Yunus Emre could have become so narrow."

Sufi leaders say that tolerance of the more heterodox sects has extended even to the Justice and Development Party [AKP] government, whose leaders, when young, were influenced by radical Islamism.

Even a decade ago, discussing the culture of tarikat on Turkish television was almost impossible, says Cemalnur Sargur, head of one branch of the Rifa'i sect, and Turkey's only female sheik. Today, she hosts two weekly television programs, including one on state television.

"Some say they are bigots, but mysticism is something that this government understands, and has opened the way for," she says.

But not everybody is happy about the increasing visibility of Sufism. Many Muslim intellectuals object to the way in which the Mevlevi brotherhood in particular has been turned into a marketing tool for Turkey's tourist board, its white-robed dervishes whirling in front of crowds of westerners sipping beer.

Elif Safak's 40 Rules of Love sparked a huge and occasionally vicious debate. Left-leaning critics accused her advocating passive fatalism in the face of increasing social inequality and injustice. Pointing out that she wrote her novel in English first, before having it translated into Turkish, Muslim intellectuals accused her of molding Sufi thought to suit a Western audience.

The novel does not "just hollow out our shared values, but dumps modernity's crudest and most specious beliefs into the hole," prominent Muslim intellectual Ducane Cundioglu complained in the Islamic daily Yeni Safak. "This Sufi literature is New Age ... kitsch."

Researcher Seyit Erkal thinks Cundioglu has a point. Secular Turks' interest in Sufism, he points out, really only took off after UNESCO proclaimed the Mevlevi sema, or whirling ceremony, a World Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2005. In honor of Rumi's 800th birthday, UNESCO also declared 2007 the Year of Mevlana and Tolerance.

"This is Sufism that comes from the West," Erkal says. "It is like a Turk drinking his first Turkish coffee in America."

Traditional Sufis would doubtless be horrified at what is going on in the garden on the Prince's Islands. At least two of those in attendance, Turks who studied in the United States, openly admit to being atheists. As the sun drops below the Marmara Sea, the host comes to the table carrying a bottle of Doluca Moskado, a pricey local white wine.

The man at the head of the table calls a halt to intricate discussions of the qualities of different Sufi saints, and holds up a wine glass. "The squalid life is not for the Sufi," he says. "The Sufi is a gourmet, a master of the art of living."

Adamant that there can be no Islamic mysticism without an acceptance of the foundations of Islam, the Koran, the Sunnah and religious law, or sharia, Cemalnur Sargur nonetheless shrugs her shoulders at such heterodoxy.

"There are a lot of wrong roads on the road to the Truth, and those who realize they are on the wrong road quickly find the right one," she says.

After Elif Safak's book came out, she adds, she received hundreds of telephone calls from people saying that they wanted to know more about Rumi's companion, Shems-e Tabrizi, one of the main figures in the novel.

"The mere fact of mentioning Shems' name in this world is an act of grace," she says.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Ustad Shujaat Hussain Khan, celebrated sitar maestro, talks about his debut as a film music composer

Referred to as the greatest North Indian classical musician of his generation, Ustad Shujaat Hussain Khan is indeed a master of folk music and poetry.

Belonging to the Imdad Khan gharana of the sitar, he belongs to the seventh generation of musicians in family that boasts some of the greatest names in Hindustani music.

He is, without a doubt, a celebrated personality in the foreign arena with almost 50 musical releases and various laurels conferred on him by many Indian and international organisations.

And now the master steps into the Indian film industry as the music composer of the upcoming Hindi movie Mr Singh Mrs. Mehta.

Excerpts from a conversation with the maestro:

Can you tell us about the songs of the movie?

The movie has five ghazals, all very beautiful and soul-touching. Throughout my life, I have never been allowed to present the things that I associate with. I have never been asked to present what I am. This movie has given me chance to do so and the first two or three songs, especially, are in every sense, a part f my soul. I personally feel that the words and the tune have come together in every song, making the songs all the more beautiful.

Tell us about the singers associated with the songs of the movie

I have sung a song “Ae Khuda”. Besides this, there is a song sung by Roop Kumar Rathod. Also, Shreya Ghosal and K.K. have sung two versions of the same song. We have focused on different characterisation of each and every song. I feel that the music should be the base of the story and it should have the ability to tell the whole story on its own.

You are known for a unique voice suited for both folk music as well as poetry. So, do the songs of the movie have a mixture of both?

Absolutely, the songs do contain both the elements. Besides these two, there are elements of Geet, Ghazal and Sufi as well.

“Mr. Singh Mrs. Mehta” is a story based in London. Given that you had to fit in classical music, were you ever in two minds?

Never. This was never an issue since everyone involved with the movie had a clear outlook that the story was about Indian people. The thinking and the ideology is purely Indian. Hence, there was never a thought of being in two minds.

Nowadays, the phenomenon of ‘Rock Sufi' is in vogue. What it would be your take on that?

Some people with a hardcore approach may denounce that trend. But, I, for one would say that no music is bad as such. It is the extent to which that music touches your soul which makes it good or bad for you.

Elements of modernity are bound to come in with the advent of time. But, anything that is done to the music with a good intent is always welcome.

You are a celebrated artist in the foreign arena and now, you have made your Bollywood debut as well. So, what is the next step?

I am on the verge of finishing an album with Asha Bhosle in which the two of us are composing. There is one composition from my son as well. It is slated for a July release.

A young seeker named Cat Stevens ''picked up a couple of very important strands of the mysterious truth'' during his last tour of Australia in 1974.

Within two years they would lead him to a new faith and a new name - Yusuf Islam - and out of the music business for three decades.

In one of the most gently persuasive voices of the peace/love generation, the singer recalls a pair of random meetings with lingering wonder.

''She was a tall lady, 60 years old. Her name was Hestia Lovejoy and she turned me on to numerology. My next record was Numbers, as a direct result of that,'' he says. ''Another interesting thing was a book with a velvet cover that was given to me, a book of Rumi's poems. That was my first introduction to Sufism and that was quite important.''

Yusuf's retirement from music in 1976 was a sudden departure to fans, but the London-born Steven Georgiou maintains that his conversion to Islam was the culmination of a gradual discovery.

The assertion is borne out in the lyrics of old songs such as The Road to Find Out, from his landmark Tea for the Tillerman album of 1970, one of many classics he has enjoyed rediscovering since picking up his discarded guitar in 2002.

''It's amazing how seamless the process has been,'' he says. ''But you know, life is continuous. Each album represents a stage in my pathway of life.''

Yusuf weathered controversies after the fatwa against the British author Salman Rushdie in 1989. He also found himself briefly barred from the US in 2004 in a case of mistaken identity. Today he largely distances himself from a media seeking to cast him in the role of a political spokesman for Islam.

''I've been asked many questions in the past and to be honest, I'm not very successful at being a politician,'' he says. ''However, as a poet, as a singer, and as a spiritual person, I find lots of ways, I think, of fixing things.''

Yusuf is touring Australia for the first time in 36 years with his son, Yoriyos, whose '60s-style blues-rock band, Noxshi, is supporting on all dates. They perform tonight and on Wednesday at Sydney Entertainment Centre.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Indian choir Malhaar will perform a musical combining Sufi music, theatre and art this weekend.

Residents of Dubai with an ear for the unusual are in for a treat this Dubai Summer Surprises with Rooh-e-Ishq, a musical that combines Sufi music, theatre and art being held this weekend.

It is being performed by Malhaar, an Indian music choir in the UAE in association with Theatrewallas, a local theatre group, and Indian celebrity musicians - Gulam Ali and Shailesh Bhagawat also taking to the stage.

Rooh-e-Ishq, which roughly translates as "in love with the soul", will follow the birth of Sufism and its journey across the world through the ages.

For the uninitiated, Sufism is the mystical dimension of Islam in which Muslims seek to find divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. They generally do this by shunning all worldly pleasures and devoting themselves to God. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a Sufi. The Sufi movement has spanned several continents and cultures over a millennium and sufis composed songs in devotion to God in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu and a dozen other languages.

Rooh-e-Ishq brings together the region's dancing dervishes and the qawwals (group singers) of Punjab. It features the life and works of four master Sufis of all time, Jalaluddin Rumi, Amir Khusro, Bulleh Shah and Kabir.

Jogiraj Sikidar, founder director of Malhaar, told Emirates Business: "I was exposed to Sufi music right from my childhood when I was living in Silchar, in Assam, as on many mornings I would be woken up by the sounds of a wandering minstrel singing Sufi songs.

"Then when I went to Delhi to do my graduation my interest in Sufi music deepened further as there I was exposed to Sufi music at the tomb of Amir Khusro.

"That's the time when I realised the depth of Sufi music and how it is still relevant. I decided that I would one day do a show that would present Sufi music in a contemporary form so that today's generation can connect with it. So when I set up Malhaar I decided that this was the time to do it and this show is the result of months of research and hard work."

The musical will unravel the mystical world of Sufism through three powerful media – music, theatre and poetry – and is divided into five segments.

The first four segments are a theatrical life sketch followed by a musical performance based on the four master Sufis. In the final segment, Malhaar will perform contemporary Sufi music from Indian film and pop albums. Each segment will be introduced by an anchor, who will also recite popular Sufi couplets.

Talking about the paintings that will be prominently displayed in the theatre during the show, Sikidar said: "We asked artists from the UAE and India to make paintings based on their understanding and representation of the Sufi masters and their music."

He said the paintings would be displayed in the theatre and form part of the backdrop on the stage.

"Later, in true Sufi tradition of charity, two of the paintings that have been made by Shrabani Brahmachary, a well-known artist from Delhi, will be auctioned and the proceeds from it will go to Manzil, the school for children with special needs."

The show will be held at 6.30pm tomorrow [today, Friday, June 25] at the Centrepoint Auditorium, Ductac, Mall of the Emirates. Tickets are priced at Dh50 and are available at the box-office and Gazebo and Kamat restaurants. For more, e-mail malhaar.choir@gmail.com.

By Ed Lake, *Cultural calendar: Sufi history lesson through music* - The National - Abu Dhabi, UAESaturday, June 19, 2010

The strangest of this week’s art events comes to the Mall of the Emirates on Friday.

I read the press release about it and was, I admit, perplexed. Not that it was badly written, not at all. Merely, the things it described were quite hard to imagine.

So I phoned up the event organiser and asked him what was going on. He spoke almost uninterruptedly for 15 minutes, clarifying certain details, sketching the history of his group and enlarging on the attractions laid out in the press release. The more I heard, the less I understood. I thanked him and hung up, and then fretted about how to write these next few paragraphs.

Allow me to attempt a description of the “unique Asian musical” Rooh-e-Ishq.

It arose out of rehearsals held by Malhaar, which claims to be the UAE’s first Indian music choir. The show will relate the history of Sufism, both in song and in theatrical interludes recounting the lives of four Sufi saints, Jalalud’din Rumi, Amir Khusro, Bulleh Shah and Kabir. There will also be poetry and paintings, the latter of which will have been created especially.

In all, 45 artists and performers will contribute to the show.

The choir employs western harmonies but, according to its director Jogiraj Sikidar, “Indian texture”.

The choir’s repertoire touches on both qawwali and Bollywood styles. There will also be an oudist and a player of an Indian instrument whose name I missed but which, I understand, is heard quite rarely these days.

The performance will last for three hours. Patience is clearly a prerequisite.

[Picture: Shams of Tabriz as portrayed in a 1500 painting in a page of a copy of Rumi's poem dedicated to Shams. BNF Paris. Photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi]

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Novelist Elif Shafak grew up with two very different models of Turkish motherhood – her modern, working, educated mother and her traditional, religious grandmother

Three months before her first child was born, Elif Shafak, Turkey's leading female novelist, found herself facing prosecution and a potential three-year prison sentence. Her crime? She was accused of insulting "Turkishness" in her novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, through a fictional character whose ancestors had been murdered in the Armenian genocide.

On the day of the trial, protesters inside and outside the courtroom jostled and slapped at the defendants – dozens of Turkish writers and intellectuals – shouting and throwing objects at them. "More disturbing than the actual trial," Shafak said at the time. "Very aggressive, very provocative."

The case was eventually dropped, only to be taken to a higher court. The trial took place a few months later. Shafak had just given birth and was not present. After a 40-minute hearing, she was acquitted.

After the case, Shafak fell into a postnatal depression that lasted for several months. Were the two linked, the legal ordeal and the postnatal depression? "I don't want to make too much of it," is all she will say, four years on. "The book was very well received, sold well and was read by a wide range of people – people who wouldn't normally break bread together. I gave readings, talks, book signings all over Turkey. People in England see only a very small part of the picture. Turkey is a complex, diverse society."

Shafak, 38, is clearly more comfortable finding other explanations for her postnatal depression. Her heart-shaped face, with its planed cheekbones and startling green eyes, becomes more animated as we move away from the topic of the trial. "I had led a very nomadic life before having children. I hadn't lived in the same house for more than a year, 18 months, my whole life. I'd lived out of suitcases. I lived an unconventional life. If I was writing a novel, it would become the most important thing in my life. I would stay in that story day and night, completely isolated from everything for several months. And then when it was finished, I'd emerge into the world once more. But that pattern of working is very difficult with children. Becoming a mother, I had to learn to become settled. But you can't ignore a book. It needs your full attention. If I ignore my novel for two days and I got back to it, she is cross with me. When I had my children, I had to change the rhythm of my writing."

She stops for a moment, then adds with wry understatement: "There was a period of panic."

Shafak is not the first novelist to struggle with the challenge of combining a writing life with a mothering life. As the novelist Bell Hooks put it: "One cannot have a family, even a non-traditional one, and be a committed artist without tremendous struggle."

Virginia Woolf's husband forbade her to have children at all, fearing that the combination of writing and raising children would destroy her already fragile mental equilibrium.

Out of her own panic, Shafak produced a powerful autobiographical novel about her experience of postnatal depression. "I called the book Black Milk because it shows that mother's milk is not always as white and spotless as society likes to think it is. And because out of that depression I was able to get inspiration. Out of that black milk I was able to develop some sort of ink."

Shafak's children are now three and two. "Motherhood has not slowed me up as a writer, but it has changed me," she says. In retrospect, she does not view the experience of postnatal depression negatively. "The first illusion of depression is that you are the only one who has ever been through it. The second illusion is that it will go on for ever. But depression is a golden opportunity to reassemble the pieces when they are broken. It made me look inside. And what I found inside me were six women – all quarrelling! Black Milk is their voices, arguing it out, making the transition from hierarchy to democracy."

Does the idealisation of motherhood make it harder for women in Turkey than here in Britain? Shafak ponders the question. "Motherhood is so sacred in Turkey. It must be perfect. There is no room for ups and downs."

But she also thinks that the experience is different for each generation, and that perhaps the adjustment to motherhood is harder for women with intellectual and professional aspirations.

"I grew up with two different models of womanhood: that of my mother, who was an educated working woman, very cultured and modern, and that of my grandmother, who was much more traditional, superstitious, religious. Women like my grandmother were, perhaps, better prepared for motherhood in some ways. Her generation would protect new mothers from jinn [a spirit in Muslim belief who could assume animal or human form] by not leaving them alone for a moment in the first month. For my mother's generation, it was harder. There was no room in their mental framework for the ups and downs. For my generation, too, motherhood has to be perfect."

Her husband, Eyüp Can, a journalist, has been a vital support. They share a commitment to an egalitarian marriage, and his involvement with the children is essential to her ability to maintain a balance between writing and bringing up children. Next year, she and Eyüp will be moving to the UK for several months while she works on her new book. They will share the childcare and her husband will commute between London and Istanbul. "If there were any competition between us, it wouldn't work. He is very unusual for a Turkish man."

Shafak's childhood was similarly peripatetic and international. Due to the demands of her mother's job, they were often physically apart, in different cities and different countries. Much of her childhood was spent living with her grandmother in Ankara. She was born in Strasbourg in 1971; her father was a philosopher and her mother a diplomat. Her parents separated soon after the birth and she was brought up by her mother.

"It took me a long time to overcome my anger towards my father for his absence. A very long time. Fury is a stimulating force, but in the long run, it is a destructive one. It's not good for the soul. I had a lot of fears in relation to my father, but the thing about fear is that if you exaggerate it, you start to believe it."

She is now on good terms with her father and her half-brothers by his second marriage. Her relationship with her mother is very close. "To be a woman diplomat and a single parent was not easy for my mother, but she is a very independent woman, very determined. The mother-daughter relationship is not composed of one colour only, but we are very good friends. There is huge love between us."

Already something of a celebrity in Turkey, Shafak is having an increasing impact on the international literary scene. She has a reputation for blending western and eastern elements in her fiction, and in her journalism she is a bold and outspoken critic of her country's politics. She is seen by many critics and readers as an exciting, innovative, politically challenging writer. Besides having won many literary awards in Turkey and abroad, she has a large and devoted readership.

"If people like your novels in Turkey, they take you into their hearts," she says. "My readers write to me about their personal lives: they invite me to their weddings; to share their most intimate joys and sorrows. I have a very strong connection with my readers. It is rewarding and very humbling."

Perhaps, too, her readers love her because she writes about things that touch so directly on their lives. Her new novel, The Forty Rules of Love, already a bestseller in Turkey, is concerned with questions of motherhood and selfhood. Ella Rubenstein, the middle-aged American housewife and mother at the heart of the novel, is unhappily married to an unfaithful and neglectful husband, and in thrall to the needs of her children. Her own life and needs and aspirations have been lost along the way, as has her belief in love.

Shafak has taken a significant risk in The Forty Rules of Love in making Ella a rather dull character, certainly at the start of the novel – the kind of woman you wouldn't want to have coffee with because you know she'll just drone on about the kids. Shafak agrees, but defends the decision. "I didn't want Ella to be extraordinary. I wanted her to be someone you could recognise instantly, whether you're a Muslim woman in a headscarf in Ankara or a Jewish woman in Boston. I wanted to write about the capacity for transformation even in uninspiring material."

If love is one of Shafak's themes, Sufism is the other. She first became interested in Sufism as a college student in her early 20s, and it has reverberated through her writing and her life ever since. In The Forty Rules of Love it takes centre stage as both theme and subject matter. The contemporary love story between Ella and Aziz, a Scottish Sufi novelist, is interwoven with a historical narrative set in 13th-century Turkey about Rumi, the Sufi poet, and his mentor, the mystic and dervish Shams of Tabriz.

"The more you read about Sufism, the more you have to listen. In time I became emotionally attached. When I was younger I wasn't interested in understanding the world. I only wanted to change it, through feminism or nihilism or environmentalism. But the more I read about Sufism the more I unlearned. Because that is what Sufism does to you, it makes you erase what you know, what you are so sure of. And then start thinking again. Not with your mind this time, but with your heart."

Sufism, motherhood, writing: Shafak feels she has found a way to align these three vital elements in her life.

"Writing is very lonely work. A novelist for years lives in an imaginary world, creating characters, killing them. It is very self-centred. It's a job that requires a big ego. But in Sufism there is no hierarchy. No one is superior to anyone else. Motherhood has changed me. Each book changes me and makes me a different person."

The Forty Rules of Love, by Elif Shafak, is published by Viking, £12.99. To order a copy for £9.99 (including UK mainland p&p), go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The labyrinthine Arab-style medina of Fez, Morocco’s historical capital of trade, culture and religious life, was a remarkable space for the 16th Annual World Sacred Music Festival June 4-13.

The expansive and diverse event, with about 60 performances, took place in the walled city's public spaces, traditional palaces and places of worship.

The festival, originally started by Moroccan anthropologist Faouzi Skalli in 1994, seems to have spawned a growing worldwide trend of sacred music festivals, including the World Festival of Sacred Music in Los Angeles every three years.

Performers included Amadou and Mariam, a blind couple from Mali who have become international stars, and Jordi Savall, a Catalan composer who is a major figure in early music.

There also was an emphasis on providing space for endangered traditions. “Some of these artists are seemingly rejected by globalization, and their traditions are sometimes in danger of disappearing,” said Alain Weber, the artistic director of the festival.

“Sacred” took many forms, from the mystic Sufi poetry of Ustad Gholam Hossain of Afghanistan to the energetic rapping of Casa Crew from Morocco. Groups associated with religious institutions, such as the Baghdad-Jerusalem group, played traditional Jewish music of Baghdad. At the same time, there were numerous performances that are not typically described as “sacred.”

Casa Crew, a hip-hop group from Casablanca who rap in the Moroccan dialect of Arabic and use samplings of traditional Arabic music, profess that rap can be spiritual.

“When you have a universal message, you can’t always communicate it directly, but the melodies that accompany the message, that [engross you], give a sense of spirituality,” says group member Simo, who goes by the moniker MASTA FLOW. He acknowledged that “sometimes it’s like ‘pump it up,’ it’s not always spiritual, but rap can be sacred like Gnawa [a form of religious music practiced in North Africa] or any other kind of music.”

For Kiya Tbassian, who is trained in Persian music but whose group Constantinople currently is working in collaboration with Corsican polyphonic a cappella group Barbara Fortuna, “it is the process of trying to find one’s identity through music that is sacred.” Tbassian’s group Constantinople played an ensemble with Barbara Fortuna on Monday night, which was a fascinating fusion of Iranian art music with the polyphonic a cappella style; an Iranian sitar mixing with Christian Renaissance-style voices.

Parvathy Baul (pictured), a North Indian mystic, held an audience transfixed with her “meditation in motion” of chanting, whirling, stepping and drumming. “The highest order of art and human expression is through music, and the body is the flute, and the wind is blowing, and He is the one who is playing through me,” she said.

For the Bauls Order, who are inspired by Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, the sacred is found through the act of performance.

The highly varied pricing of the concerts dramatically affected the type of crowd in attendance. The most expensive concerts were those in the evening at Bab Makina — the monumental gateway of the Royal Palace. With ticket prices of up to $55, these concerts were prohibitively expensive for many, resulting in empty sections on several nights. On Sunday night, the lively and athletic Drum Masters of Burundi played to a low-energy audience of tourists and Moroccan elites at Bab Makina.

Two blocks from the Palace gate, the plaza in front of Bab Boujloud (a major gate to the old walled city) teemed with crowds at free concerts every night.

On Sunday, Moroccan popular singer Najat Atabou had a young and boisterous crowd of about 5,000 dancing at the free concert. About half of the concerts were free, including Sufi music performances each night.

For many attendees Jordi Savall’s musical epic presenting the history of Jerusalem epitomized the message of harmony at the festival. The full orchestra included Israeli, Palestinian, Armenian and Greek musicians playing traditional instruments. The stunning and elaborate piece included poetry and religious texts from the many groups who have inhabited Jerusalem.

Chris Colucci, a sound designer and composer from Philadelphia, called this concert the “spirit of the festival,” which emphasized the “profound ways in which we’re all the same.”

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Jews, Christians and Muslims prayed together as regional Sufi leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bukhari was laid to rest in his home in Old City Jerusalem.

On June 1 he passed away at the age of 61, after a long struggle with heart disease. Rabbis, Muslim and Druze sheiks, Christian clerics and lay people of diverse faiths paid respects at the mourning tent, which received visitors for three days.

Sheikh Bukhari was the head of the mystical Naqshabandi Holy Land Sufi Order and Uzbek community. In his lifetime, he became deeply engaged in interfaith peace activities, including co-founding Jerusalem Peacemakers, and participating in the Interfaith Coordinating Council in Israel, Interfaith Encounter Association and the Sulha Peace Project.

Some have said Sheikh Bukhari’s heart disease was due to the stresses of peace work. His teachings and practices had put him in danger on several occasions.

The Sufi leader believed in interfaith unity and nonviolent approaches to resolving conflicts. When faced with the reality of violence in the Middle East, he found inspiration in Islamic law and tradition, as well as in the writings of Gandhi, King and Mandela.

When asked when his interfaith peace work began, he recalled a phone call he received in 1999 from the Vatican. A Cardinal requested his participation in the upcoming millennium celebration. The plan was for a Catholic Cardinal, Rabbi David Rosen and the Sufi leader to lead a peace prayer on the Mount of Olives. It was this occasion that had Sheikh Bukhari become more seriously involved in interfaith efforts in the Holy Land.

In his own words, “What sets these peace efforts apart from the rest of Israel’s peace camp is a focus on religion, rather than politics, as the basis for dialogue and negotiation. Mainstream activists are largely secular.”

He had a vision that religion would win the peace: “It’s not religions that want peace…The people who believe in God, the religious people, the people who really want to implement God’s word, they can make the peace, they can make the changes, because if a politician stands and speaks, many people listen to him, but how many people agree with him? Very little. But when the religious leader who stands and speaks, they listen to him and they agree with him. The religious leader has a stronger role than a politician.”

On this topic he told one reporter in 2008:

Religious leaders have to take a role to work with the community on the grassroots, to help the people to find that violence will not solve our problem. The only way we do it by acting as a family, remembering that God created us to live here in peace and harmony, not to kill each other.

And for the last 9 years now I’ve been doing that, and we formed an organization called Jerusalem Peacemaker. We make activities to bring peoples together to sit and find a common language that we all love the Holy Land we all love the spirit, so we have to do something about it.

I had the chance to meet Sheikh Bukhari in Melbourne this past December. Thousands of people had descended on the Australian city for the Parliament of World Religions. People of various faith traditions from across the globe attended to learn from one another.

At the Parliament, Bukhari was on a panel with others from the Middle East to discuss ‘Religion, Conflict and Peace Building: The Case of Israel-WestBank-Gaza.’ The panelist told stories of how peacemakers in the Holy Land were working together to bridge the gulf between peoples.

Besides attending the panel discussion, I encountered the Sheikh in the press room as he was interviewed by Rachel Kohn, Australia’s leading journalist on religion. The two had met previously in his Jerusalem home in 2008. In that discussion, he outlines the history of his home and his family’s burial process.

We have our own graveyard in the garden here. So we never leave home, so we’re born here and we die here, and we’re buried here. So we have in my garden a small cemetery, its only for the family members, so we all get a chance to be buried inside the house and that’s one of the privileges we have that nobody else does…

It is a big room, about 4 by 4 under the ground and we lay them next to each other and by the time for the one who’s dead, he becomes just bones, so we move the bones aside and we lay next to it…

Sheikh Bukhari was thus wrapped in a white shroud, and buried in same grave as that of his grandfather, great-grandfather and the line of family sheikhs dating back to the 17th century.

His family had first migrated from Bukhara to Jerusalem in 1616 to establish a center to teach Sufism. Their home was built on the Via Dolorosa, the road that Jesus walked from the place of Pontius Pilate’s sentencing to his crucifixion.

He was a direct descendent of the Sunni scholar Imam Muhammad Ismail al-Bukhari of Bukhara, the ninth-century author of the hadith al-bukhari a collecter oral tradition that contains guidance about Islamic tradition and religious law and practice.

Bukhari’s family played a role in the political history of Jerusalem during the Ottoman era, when they were charged with overseeing the Islamic holy places in the Holy Land, including in Lebanon.

In his interview with Rachel Kohn, he had spoken of the many holy places in Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount for Christians, and the Wailing Wall of the Jews. Such sites are sources of contention in Israel, however Bukhari once said:

The place is not relevant to the worshipping, because God says ‘I gave you the whole earth to worship me on it.’ So any place, if I pray here in my house or anybody prays anywhere else, if I go to the church or the synagogue and I pray there, God will not say ‘No, you step out, you don’t belong here.’

…The place, it’s not relevant to the worshipping. If we are really sincere about God our holy places are the same…So the holy places, belong to God, not to us. …..If the mosque was here or there, or the temple was here or there, this is our own issue, but God says anywhere you pray, I’ll accept it. I accept it, so let’s not pinpoint issues that make complications…

Sheikh Bukhari is survived by a wife and six children, whose families are scattered across Jerusalem, Gaza and the US.

Monday, June 21, 2010

By Staff Reporter, *Premiere of ‘Dara’ at PNCA today* - The News International - Karachi, Pakistan

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Islamabad: The Ajoka Theatre Productions in collaboration with Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) will stage the premiere of the play ‘Dara’ here from June 17 to 19.

Based on the life and times of Mughal Prince Dara Shikoh, Ajoka’s new play is about the less-known but extremely dramatic and moving story of Dara Shikoh, eldest son of Emperor Shahjahan, who was imprisoned and executed by his younger brother Aurangzeb.

Dara was not only a crown prince, but also a poet, a painter and a Sufi. He wanted to build on the vision of Akbar the Great and bring the ruling Muslim elite closer to the local religions.

His search for the truth and shared teachings of all major religions is reflected in his scholarly works such as ‘Sakeena-tul-Aulia’, ‘Safina-tul-Aulia’ and ‘Majma-ul-Bahrain.’

The play also explores the existential conflict between Dara the crown prince, the Sufi and the poet.

The violent and devastating struggle between brothers Dara and Aurangzeb, the decisive role played by their sisters Jahan Ara and Roshan Ara, the spiritual challenge posed by the Sufi Sarmad to the authority of the ‘muftis’ and ‘qazis’ of the empire and the growing discontent among the masses are elements which make ‘Dara’ a gripping and powerful play.

Like all Ajoka’s plays, ‘Dara’ has a very relevant message for our contemporary times, said the organisers.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

On June 15 every year, a fair is held in Rajasthan near the India-Pakistan border in memory of the star-crossed lovers - Laila and Majnu - who are believed to be buried in a tomb there.

The legend of these two lovers has also influenced Sufi literature where the tale is a prototype of divine love - the beloved Laila is actually god or a divine lover worshipped by Majnu who is literally possessed by her love.

But in western Rajasthan, the story is symbolic of the composite culture of the sub continent. So in this fair, hundreds of people collect to ask for the blessing of the two lovers and the gift of true love in their lives.

"I heard there was a fair here so I came to see. It is said that whatever you ask for here, you get it," said a girl visiting the fair.

Before the Kargil conflict this shrine was also open to Pakistani visitors.

There are many variations to the legend of Laila and Majnu. In a version popular here Laila is forcibly married off to another man. Her husband challenges Majnu but as soon as his sword pierces Majnu's heart, it is Laila who dies.

The tomb of Laila and Majnu is a major attraction in these parts, therefore it's not surprising that even one of the BSF [Border Security Force] posts on this border is called the Majnu post.

New York and London have been treated in recent seasons to major exhibitions of Chola bronzes. A thousand years ago, sculptors in southern India began creating exquisite devotional figures—most often depictions of the Hindu god Shiva and his consort Parvati.

The bronzes are palpably sensuous and, even now, undimmed by centuries of worship that involves draping the figures in silks and garlands; anointing them in butter, curds, milk and sandalwood paste; and parading them through villages and towns to show the gods their domain.

Among the most sublime art that the hand of man has produced, the bronzes remain part of a living religious tradition.

It turns out that they are part of still-living artistic tradition, too. In "Nine Lives," William Dalrymple introduces us to Srikanda Stpathy, a 35th-generation bronze caster directly descended from the stone carvers who first learned the art of bronze casting in the region of India called Tamil Nadu. The casting tradition has kept his family busy for 700 years, and his workshop has "a backlog of orders that would take at least a year to clear."

Such are the joys of "Nine Lives," in which Mr. Dalrymple profiles nine Indians and through them the variety of religions that thrive in our reportedly homogenized world. His subjects include a Jain nun, a Theyyam dancer, a sacred prostitute, a singer of ancient epics, a Sufi "lady fakir," a Tibetan monk who renounced his vows to fight the Chinese invaders and now lives in exile, a Tantric worshipper of the ferocious goddess Tara, and a blind Baul (wandering singer).

Mr. Dalrymple lets them all speak directly about their lives and beliefs, and he sketches along the way both their individual narratives and the history and literature of their faiths.

Discussing the meaning of Srikanda's work, Mr. Dalrymple ends up musing on the place of sex in Hinduism—noting that the Judeo- Christian Scriptures begin with the creation of light while Hinduism "begins its myth with the creation of Skama—sexual desire: in the beginning was desire, and desire was with God, and desire was God."

He cites a fourth-century poet-prince who tried to discern whether asceticism or sensuality was the true path to God: "Tell us decisively which we ought to attend upon," the poet says in one of his verses. "The sloping sides of the mountain in the wilderness? Or the buttocks of a woman abounding in passion?" In a later chapter in "Nine Lives," the Baul singer, part of a mystical Hindu tradition, seems to offer an answer: "Never plunge into the river of lust / For you will not reach the shore. / It is a river without banks, / Where typhoons rage, / And the current is strong."

Mr. Dalrymple calls "Nine Lives" a travel book, but it is more an episodic look at religion in the age of globalization. Turning away from the country's most pressing religious story—the battles between Hindus and Muslims that have shaped Indian politics for the past two decades as the secularism into which the country was born in 1947 has eroded—Mr. Dalrymple conveys the details of everyday worship and fulfills that hoary cliché of giving voice to the voiceless. Each of the figures he profiles exults in his faith, but most also fear the future.

As a child, Lal Peri twice escaped the violence engendered by the birth of Bangladesh and has since found sanctuary in the temple of Lal Shabhaz Qalander, a Sufi saint who preached religious tolerance in the 13th century. But she knows that this syncretic worship, and Sufism in general, is threatened by the exponential rise of fundamentalist Islam, supported by the Gulf states and the madrassa school system they have built throughout Pakistan.

Mr. Dalrymple goes to see the head of a new madrassa in the town, who speaks quite openly of his desire to destroy the Sufi temple and any variant type of Islam.

As close as Mr. Dalrymple comes to anger is in describing the dynamiting by Pakistani Taliban of a small shrine to the 17th-century Pashto poet-saint Rahman Baba at the foot of the Khyber Pass. Mr. Dalrymple had visited it often in the late 1980s while covering the war in Afghanistan and reveled in the way refugees gathered there to take solace in the poetry and music of the Sufis.

Modernity is another threat. The Theyyam dancer, Hari Das, works as both a well digger and a jail guard to make ends meet. The high point of his year is the two months when he travels to festivals incarnating deities and monsters as part of the Theyyam rites.

In an intense ritualist dance, the actors—dressed in fantastic and weighty costumes—are possessed by the Hindu deities they are incarnating. Yet as much as Hari Das wants his sons to master the physically demanding art, he knows that they can find better jobs through education.

It is the same for the sculptor Srikanda, whose son is interested in computers. As pained as he is by the thought of sundering a 700-year tradition, he acknowledges: "Our work here is very hard. Computer work is not so difficult, and it pays much more. . . . After all, as my son says, this is the age of computers. And as much as I might want otherwise, I can hardly tell him this is the age of the bronze caster."

It is, though, the age for writers like Mr. Dalrymple who fall in with the rhythms and languages of foreign lands. "Nine Lives" shows us lives hidden almost entirely from Western readers.

Another recent book, Alice Albinia's "Empires of the Indus," presents the cultural richness of the still fought-over lands around the Indus River—which flows from Tibet through India and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea—and manages to humanize Pakistan.

New Delhi/Ajmer: Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday sent a 'chaddar' to the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moin-ud-din Chishti in Rajasthan's Ajmer city.

The cloth is to be offered at the shrine by Congress party leaders on the occasion of Urs.

'Urs' marks the death anniversary of Moin-ud-din Chishti, who is popularly referred to as 'Gharib Nawaz', or the 'messiah of the poor'.

Scores of devotees from all over India converge the shrine on the occasion.

Chishti, who is believed to have been born in 1142 AD, preached tolerance and unity of all religions. In 1236 AD, the saint entered his cell to pray in seclusion for six days, at the end of which he died. Since then Urs has been celebrated for six days every year.

It is believed that praying at the tomb of the saint fulfils a person's wishes. Devotees visiting the shrine offer fresh flowers as a symbol of their devotion. Some even go up to the extent of offering large amounts of money and expensive jewels.

Devotional music and recitations from Chishti's own works and other Sufi saints are presented in traditional Qawwali (chorus singing) style.

The annual event culminates with readings from the holy Quran and special prayers.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

As I wait in a crowded square at one of the entrances into the old town of Fes in Morocco for musicians to take the stage after evening prayers, the scene before me is as far removed as it can be from quarrels of the world beyond the Atlas Mountains.

I have come to Fes to take in the sights and sounds of the most fascinating city in Morocco, likely in all of Africa.

The Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, held annually at this time, is unique as musicians and poets from around the globe gather here to celebrate the language of the heart that transcends any and all divisions among the children of Adam.

Fes was founded by Moulay Idris, a descendant of Muhammad, around 789. His son Moulay Idris II extended the town during his reign from 807 to 828, and he is buried in the centre of Fes inside a mosque remarkable for its interior art work and exquisite calligraphy in marble.

The old town of Fes is a labyrinth of narrow streets, shops and homes where, except for electricity and its working facilities, one is immediately transported back to the times of Maimonides, the revered Jewish sage from the 12th century, and earlier.

Maimonides and his family found refuge in Fes after leaving behind trouble-infested Cordoba, as did generations of families later — Arabs, Berbers and Jews, from al-Andalus (Spain). They came to Fes and added to its fame and fortune.

Commerce and philosophy were joined together in Fes. Here stands one of the grandest mosques in Africa, al-Quaraouiyine, and it houses one of the oldest universities in the world, opened in 859, where Ibn Rushd (Averroes) lectured.

Fes is also the centre of Sufism — the path of mystics in Islam that connects with all faith traditions through the language of the heart — and the gateway to Islam in sub-Saharan Africa.

The mosque and shrine of Shaykh Ahmed Tijani is a short walking distance from al-Quaraouiyine, and this is traditionally the first stop for pilgrims to Mecca from Senegal, Mali, Mauritania and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.

The Shaykh established the hugely popular Sufi order, al-Tijaniyya, in Africa. When I entered the shrine to pay respect to him and perform my mid-afternoon prayers, I found myself surrounded by a congregation of black Africans in robes of vibrant colours visiting to honour their beloved Sufi master.

In my travels through Muslim countries, visiting homes and sharing meals in such remote places as Ajmer in India or Samarkand and Kashgar in Central Asia, I have unfailingly noticed the quiet dignity of people in sharp contrast with the hateful politics of Islamists.

I find the dignity of people in Fes, consistent with the city’s history, appears as a rebuke to Muslims across mountains, deserts and seas who have turned their hearts from being an oasis of tranquility into a snake-pit of bigotry and violence.

The musicians return and a singer from Mali fills the air with his love song to Abraham and Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, and the people around me respond in rhythm to the music while the starry night unfolds above me in an absolutely enchanting Fes.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The old woman is whirling into a blur. Qawwals are singing. It’s a joyous mood. Tonight, the sufi shrine of Hazrat Shah Farhad in Bageecha Pirji, near Sadar Bazaar, is lit up with lamps. It is Shah Farhad’s Urs, his 286th death anniversary. He died in 1723 AD.

In Sufism, the death of a saint is celebrated as the occasion when his soul gets united with that of his beloved, the God. Urs means ‘wedding’ in Arabic.

Shah Farhad was born in Delhi but grew up in Burhanpur in central India where his father was a governor. As a child, he got attached to a mystic who initiated him into an offshoot of the Chishti order. Shah Farhad later settled in Delhi where he acquired a following. This evening’s crowd is a proof of his popularity.

Every morning before opening their stores, the traders in the neighbourhood come to the dargah to get their shop keys blessed by Shah Farhad. Childless women come asking for children. Students come to get their books blessed.

The shrine is also a place where you come to get rid of djinns, the mysterious beings who, according to Islamic beliefs, are made of smokeless fire. These creatures trap vulnerable people in their spell and make their life miserable. The ‘possessed’ men and women then visit fakeers and shrines to become normal again.

Some come to the dargah of Shah Farhad, also known as the master of djinns. Clinging to the grills, the tormented scream and shiver in agony, asking the djinns to leave. If they become free, they become life long followers of the saint.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

For the last week, al Shabaab has launched daily attacks in Mogadishu, using gunmen and mortars. As a result there are 50-100 casualties on some days, most of them civilians caught in the crossfire.

In the last three years, since al Shabaab, and other Islamic radical groups began their attempts to conquer the country, over 20,000 have died and 1.5 million people have become refugees.

Somalia has become the most violent and lawless place on the planet. While this has generally aided the pirates operating off the north coast, the major seafaring nations have organized an anti-piracy force that has increasingly hindered the pirates. The use of warships and aircraft, and new tactics (emphasizing more aircraft patrols and preemptive attacks on mother ships) has sharply reduced the attacks this year.

Although there are a lot of weapons coming into the country, there are not enough meet demand. Thus the prices have more than tripled in the last few months. Ethiopia has been supplying Sufi militias, who often operate near the Ethiopian border. The U.S. and EU have been supplying the TG [Transitional Government], while Iran, via Eritrea, has been supplying the Islamic radical militias.

The TG troops are the most lavishly equipped, and many of these soldiers desert and sell their weapons on the open market. But there are more people seeking arms. Iran has an easier time getting cash to al Shabaab and Hizbul Islam (because of Israeli attacks on Iranian arms ships and pressure on Eritrea to halt this gunrunning). So Islamic radicals tends to be the biggest customer for weapons from TG deserters.

Kenya keeps moving more troops and police to their Somali border, as Islamic radical militias, and bandits, on the other side continue to get more aggressive.

June 9, 2010: A roadside bomb went off in Mogadishu, killing at least twelve and wounded over twenty. Most of these casualties were civilians, although the target was Transitional Government (TG) soldiers (five of whom died).

June 8, 2010: In central Somalia, 320 kilometers north of Mogadishu, hundreds of al Shabaab gunmen were defeated after they attacked the Sufi controlled villages of Dhusamareb and Marergur. The al Shabaab fighters were forced to retreat, abandoning many weapons, vehicles and large quantities of ammunition. The Sufi militias, who are allied with the TG, were seen celebrating.

Three ministers of the Transitional Government have resigned, further paralyzing the fragile coalition. Cooperation is not a popular practice in Somalia.

A Somali militant group allied with the country's weak U.N.-backed transitional federal government says it has killed and captured fighters from the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militia during clashes in central Somalia.

Analysts say the casualties, reportedly inflicted by the Sufi group Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jamma'a, could signal the start of a series of significant clashes in the region.

Ahlu-Sunna Wal-Jamma'a spokesman Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Abu Yusuf said the group had attacked al-Shabab fighters in and around the central town of Dhusamareb. He said in this operation, four al-Shabab militia troops were killed, and one captured. He said his group reports no casualties.

Located on a major highway linking Somalia's capital Mogadishu with the northern autonomous region of Puntland, Dhusamareb is seen as a strategically important town in the battle for central Somalia.

In January, al Shabab said it had retreated from Dhusamareb just days after its forces had seized control of the town. Ahlu-Sunna has been attacking al-Shabab positions since taking up arms against the group in 2008. In March, Ahlu-Sunna signed an agreement with Somalia's transitional federal government to provide support in the fight against al-Shabab in return for senior positions within the government.

Analysts say two planes carrying weapons and ammunitions to be used against al-Shabab were delivered to Ahlu-Sunna in Dhusarmareb last week.

Earlier this week, locals told the United Nations humanitarian news service IRIN fresh fighting had broken out between the two sides. Eyewitnesses estimated around 5,000 families, or 30,000 people, had fled from Dhusarmareb and surrounding towns. Experts say it could signal the start of increased clashes across central Somalia.

International Crisis Group Horn of Africa Director E.J Hogendooen says both sides are mustering fighters in the region. "All indications, at least from the indications we've received, is that al-Shabab has also moved some of its forces into central Somalia so this may be the start of a fairly significant series of clashes between Alhu Sunna and al-Shabab," Hogendooen said.

Alhu-Sunna Wal-Jamma'a's public perception in Somalia has been marred by its links to Ethiopia, the country's traditional enemy. Addis Ababa reportedly helped the group negotiate a deal with the Somali government.

Washington: Rich cultural traditions like Sufi poetry that help foster values of tolerance and peaceful coexistence are truly reflective of the Pakistani nation and not its militancy-related problems that make the headlines of newspapers across the globe every day, Islamabad’s ambassador to Washington said on Tuesday.

“Pakistan is much more than the everyday headlines of newspapers published across the globe about its’ militancy-related issues. Pakistan represents 180 million people with their cultural diversity and aspirations for the future,” Ambassador Husain Haqqani said.

He was underlining the need to see Pakistan in its entirety - in contrast with the stereotyped, superficial portrayals of the country in parts of the international media - as he spoke to a gathering of Americans and Pakistanis at the country’s embassy.

The Pakistan embassy was hosting a performance by renowned qawwal Amjad Farid Sabri, son of the legendary Ghulam Farid Sabri.

“These traditions are part of our glorious cultural heritage. The democratic government is working to revive cultural traditions so that the world realises that a handful of extremists do not represent Pakistan. Rather it is the overwhelming majority who see the message of tolerance, love and peace in such traditions that symbolises what Pakistan is truly based on,” he said.

Egypt's Board of Sufi Orders has instructed its branches throughout the country to abide by new Endowment Ministry (Awqaf) regulations so as to allow them to continue performing their traditional zikr rituals.

"We want to make sure these rituals don't violate the sanctity of our mosques," said Endowments Minister Hamdy Zaqzouq.

The ministry set down nine conditions that Sufis must abide by in order to perform the ritual, including a ban on the use of megaphones and loudspeakers so as not to disturb others.

Supreme Sheikh of the Sufi Orders Abdel Hady el-Qasby said that the ministry's conditions were in line with Sufi ideology. "Those who violated the regulations in the past did not belong to acknowledged Sufi orders in the first place," he said.

The Sufi zikr ritual is performed to remind worshipers of God's benevolence towards man.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

By Suanshu Kurana, *Songs of the Mystics* - Indian Express -IndiaTuesday, June 8, 2010

Earlier this year film-maker and music composer Muzaffar Ali wowed the Delhi audience with his brainchild, Jahan-e-Khusrau — a three-day sufi music festival to commemorate the death anniversary of Sufi saint Hazrat Amir Khusrau.

Now, two more musical events in the city are set to acquaint the audience with the works of sufi stalwarts like Amir Khusrau, Rumi, Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti and Baba Bulleshah, on the occasion of World Music Day on June 19.

The first is Shaam-e-Sukoon, a festival being organised by the city-based Swar Dharohar. The two-day festival will open on June 19 with a performance by Delhi-based Niyaz Sabri, a third generation sufi singer.

“Sufi music is more like world music today. Everybody likes and appreciates it. Since Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti was one of the greatest sufi mystics of the country, most of my performance will have qalams by him,” says Sabri.

This will be followed by a session of sufiana qalams by Zafar Hayat Niyaz.

The second day of Shaam-e-Sukoon will feature ghazal singers Zulfi Khan and Yateesh Acharya.

The other event, the Sada-e-Sufi, organised by Husan Ara Trust at India Habitat Centre is scheduled for June 20. It will celebrate the life and works of the 13th century Muslim poet Mawlana Jalal-ud-Din Balkhi-Rumi with a performance by renowned Hyderabad-based qawwal Adil Hussain and his troupe.

The magic of legendary Sufi singers of Punjab — Wadali Brothers (Puranchand Wadali and Pyarelal Wadali) — left the audience spellbound at the International Summer Festival at The Ridge in Shimla that came to an end on Sunday.

Though Lakhwinder got only half-an-hour’s slot at the festival, the fifth-generation star of the Wadali family did not disappoint his fans and Sufi music lovers.

“In this limited time, I did try my best to give you (audience) a feel of what Wadali brothers are known for. If I come here next time, I will sing for hours,” he said.

“It was a real treat to listen to the young Wadali,” said Horticulture Minister Narender Bragta, who was the chief guest on the concluding day.

Lakhwinder started with his father’s popular devotional song Tu Mane Ya Na Mane... and then switched over to other Punjab folk numbers.

The festival was held this time in collaboration with Shimla Doordarshan for a live telecast.Om Guri Dutt Sharma, Station Director, Doordarshan (Shimla), said: “The Shimla summer festival has a glorious history and several big names have performed here since 1960s. Shimla DD feels proud to have been a partner.”

There were complaints this year as no big-budget singers from Bollywood were invited to perform. International figures were also missing.

To this, Deputy Commissioner J S Rana said: “We made a serious effort to promote new talent — whether local or national. Had more funds been made available by the government, or we got sponsors, we would have certainly invited big-budget performers. Yet, with limited resources at our disposal, the festival has been successful.”

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Iranian editor Seyyed-Ali Mirafzali has found a collection of 205 new quatrains composed by the 12th-century Sufi Persian poet, Sanai Ghaznavi.

“I edited Sanai quatrains based on 25 manuscripts and after the work was finished I realized that some 205 of his quatrains had not been published so far,” Mirafzali told Mehr News Agency.

The 41-year-old editor claims his edition to be the most complete and accurate compared to the ones published so far. “The new edition is composed of 740 quatrains, including the newly found compositions, which make it more complete than the one edited by Mohammad-Taqi Modarres-Razavi and known as the most complete edition published so far,” he explained.

Mirafzali said the new quatrains were edited in consultation with Iranian poet and literary critic Mohammad-Reza Shafiei Kadkani and will be published along with the rest of the quatrains in the near future.

Sanai is best-known for using various verse forms including ode, sonnet and rhymed couplet to express different aspects of Sufism.

Sanai inspired many great Persian poets who lived after him such as Mowlavi, Attar ad Nezami.

The Walled Garden of Truth is Sanai's best-known work which contains 10,000 couplets.

Salafism or Wahabism, also referred to as cult of Ahl-e-Hadith is supposed to be directly opposed to the sufi strain of Islam. In India too the two sects are opposed to each other though here, due to democratic secular polity, nature of conflict is not very aggravated or violent. The partisans of both the ideologies apart, it confuses many Muslims as to what are their differences about and why they condemn each other?

The word salafi means what pertains to our forefathers – aslaf i.e. we have strayed from the pure Islam practiced by our early ancestors and must be restored. According to the ideologues of Salafi Islam, our practices should be based only on Qur’an and hadith, not on any fiqhi mazhab or school of jurisprudence like Hanafi, Shafi’i etc. Hence they are also known as Ahl-e-Hadith as they base all their juristic decisions on Qur’an and hadith.

The Salafis strongly condemn Sufi Islam as corrupt and destructive of all that Islam stands for. To visit Sufi mausoleums and to pray and invoke intercession (shafa’at) is totally against Qur’an and Islamic teachings. Only Allah’s name could be invoked, not of anyone else not even of the Prophet (PBUH), let alone of any sufi saint. One cannot pray even on the Prophet’s grave. One cannot even recite the Qur’an facing the Prophet’s grave. To invoke intercession, according to the Salafis, amounts to shirk (associating partners with Allah which is great sin).

Those who are supporters of Sufi Islam totally disagree with these views. They argue intercession cannot amount to shirk as intercession does not elevate a person from human to deistic status, human being remains human being though one who has achieved perfection (insane-e-kamil) through ones spiritual perfection. They quote hadith in their support. In hadith literature, according to the supporters of Sufi Islam, the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) has been described as Shafi’ al-mudhnibin i.e. intercessor on behalf of sinners.

Here in this essay it is not our intention to support this or that ideology which has torn the Muslim world apart and caused much challenges, even violence. Our intention is to understand both the strains and understand the factors which gave rise to these ideologies among Muslims. It is certainly not easy to reconcile the two but understanding the underlying factors can probably pave the way for better appreciation of both the schools of thought.

The Sufi Islam

Before we understand the origin of Wahabi or Salafi Islam we must first understand the origins of Sufi Islam and its need for Muslims. One also has to understand why the Sufi Islam acquired tremendous popularity in the Islamic world and remained dominant for centuries. The Salafi Islam originated in Najd area of Hijaz now named after the Saudi dynasty Saudi Arabia as an ideology as late as 18th century.

What are reasons of tremendous popularity of Sufi Islam? Let us remember religion, and any religion for that matter, basically fulfills two human needs – moral and spiritual. Most of the great religions of the world have originated in the times of great moral degradation. When greed, crass materialism, war, pillage, loot, plunder and ruthless exploitation begins to rule, a reformer, a prophet and great moral thinker appears on the scene and either through divine revelation or his own thoughts tries to restore morality in the society.

Such a person does not normally rely on rational thought alone but also anchors his teachings deep into his inner spiritual resources. All great religious founders resorted to what one can call deep encounter with ones own self and searched for truth deep inside. It is this encounter with ones own self or solitude which provides resource for abiding truth and that appeals to the people. Mere rational thought, however philosophical or exalted it may be, will not have deeper emotional impact on people.

Rational thought, it may be noted, has its own significance and performs great social functions and ensures human development and progress and so there is no question of lessening its importance. But it appeals to the intellectuals and engineers and architects of society and scientific thought. However, either they are averse to or simply not interested in what is human deeper emotional self and its potential.

They are explorers of macrocosm, not microcosm. Their interest is in what is out there, not what is in here. The Sufis, mystics and bhaktas explore their inner self and for them self is more important than the whole universe as universe is much more important to intellectuals and philosopher and scientists than the inner self. The Sufis and mystics maintain that one who has deeper knowledge of oneself (self) can have knowledge of God (Rabb). God cannot be understood only rationally but through deeper spiritual resources.

Spiritualism brings deeper conviction and inner solace and certitude what Qur’an calls iman (faith). It needs both heart and mind to believe and hence, according to the Qur’an, those whose hearts are sealed can never believe. Belief has to be grounded in deeper spiritual forces and superficial rationality cannot achieve deeper conviction. The Sufis and mystics spend years fighting great impediments encountered in themselves and perfect their nafs through minimizing their desires and removing all traces of greed controlling acquisitive instincts.

Then they emerge as what we can call as role model for the masses of people in the society and gather around them large number of followers. One more social function of religion is to provide solace to troubled hearts and minds. No amount of material wealth can buy this inner solace and these Sufis become source of inner solace for these troubled souls.

The Sufis and mystics use rich cultural resources to achieve this purpose. Poetry and its powerful symbolic language on one hand, and, music, on the other, provide spiritual tools which have great emotional appeal. Also, Sufis assimilate different cultural values and express themselves through cultural values and language of the region they situate themselves in. This again greatly enhances their appeal to the masses of people.

Thus many great sufis happened to be from Iran and hence they wrote in Persian. The Persian poetry was greatly enriched by the Sufis of Iran. They did not hesitate to use symbols like wine, cup of wine or sip bearer of wine saqi for spiritual purposes giving it entirely new meaning and significance. Also, the Sufis spoke language of love, not of power. It is language of love which has emotional appeal, not language of power which reflects ambition and exploitation.

Thus it is rich cultural resources and language of love which tremendously enhances appeal of sufi Islam. For example what Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi could achieve through his Mathnavia Ma’navi could not have been achieved through hundreds of toms written by great scholars in terms of emotional appeal. The Mathnavi was even called Qur’an in Pehlavi language (i.e. Persian).

It is also important to note that Jalaluddin Rumi was as great a scholar of Arabic as of Persian. Arabic was language of Islamic learning whereas Persian was language of culture and administration and Maulana Rum chose Persian for writing his Mathnavi precisely because it was language of the people and their cultural expressions were in that language and it was this powerful cultural tool that made Mathnavi popular over ages.

The Indian Sufis, on the other hand, also wrote either in Persian or even in regional languages like Brij, Avadhi, Khari Boli, Bengali, Marathi and in Urdu and used symbolism of local culture. Also, since they spoke language of love there was no rejection of the other, only acceptance. But ideological puritans, on the other hand, speak language of rejection, one who is not purist, is not acceptable. Thus they narrow down their circle of followers. One who does not believe in their ideology is not a believer and hence a kafir.

Also, the Sufis, through assimilation of local cultural symbols, even rituals made it easy for the local masses not only to flock to them but also convert to Islam which became much nearer to their way of life. In India, the rituals around sufi mausoleums bear close resemblance to those of a Hindu shrine replacing the idol with a sufi grave. Conversion should not result in cultural rupture. Culture is much closer to ones heart than any intellectual belief.

There is another dimension which one has to take into account for origin, development and popularity of sufi Islam. Islam did not remain confined to Arabian Peninsula with scarce cultural resources but spread to far and wide with highly developed cultures and civilizations like those of Iran and India, besides others. While Islam impacted on these cultures it was also in turn impacted by them and new composite strains of cultures developed in these regions. Both Iran and India developed highly enriched composite cultures due to entry of Islam.

It was this composite and enriched culture which using all native and foreign cultural resources Sufis adopted unhesitatingly. Thus it made easier for the people of those regional composite cultures to identify themselves with Sufis and their creative endeavors like poetry, music and in some cases even dancing in trance. Mehfil-e-sama’ (the divine musical session) became an important institution in the sufi Islam. The ulama opposed it saying music is haram (prohibited) in Islam. However, for masses it was important means to be drawn towards Sufis. Amir Khusro, Nizamuddin Awliya’s disciple made very rich contributions to the world of sufi music.

Salafi Islam

The Sufi Islam began, according to some scholars right from the Prophet’s (PBUH) time as some of his companions, drawing inspiration from him, indulged in rigorous spiritual practices and ahl-e-suffa (those who sat on a place outside the Prophet’s house and used to practice very simple life). Some people consider them as the first Sufis. Sufis were subsequently divided in several schools of thought one of which is known as Wahdat al-Wujud school. This school was founded by Muhiyuddin Ibn Arabi, a Spanish Sufi of great eminence.

This school which believes in One Real Being and that all others are His manifestations, was most open and liberal and hence became very popular in India and attracted maximum number of following. It produced great Sufi saints who were highly revered by Hindus and Muslims alike. They were truly spiritual and role models for many. Among Arab countries too, Muhiyuddin Ibn Arabi and Sufis of his school were quite popular.

However, after decline of power and onslaught of western colonialism, Sufism lost its original thrust and vigour and degenerated into superstitious practices, amulets and charms and Sufis also encouraged that. Such degeneration resulted in inaction and total submission to whosoever was in authority. Masses flocked to Sufis or their graves not for any spiritual inspiration but for mere solace and seeking solution to their problems through charms and amulets or mere invocation of sufi saints.

This degeneration created its own reaction. This reaction came in its strongest form from Najd which was predominantly Bedouin area with simple style of life with no complex cultural traditions like in Iran or India. Salafi movement was founded by Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab (1703-1792) of Najd. The name Wahabi movement draws from his name. He was educated in Madina. He was quite studious and acquired his expertise in hadith from well known Muhaddith (scholar of hadith) Sheikh Muhammad Hayat Sindhi.

It is said once Abdul Wahhab was standing near the chamber of the Prophet and people were indulging in what according to Sheikh Hayat Sindhi was bid’at (innovative and false practices). This was, it is said, the turning point in Sheikh Abdul Wahhab’s mind. He decided to purify Islam of all these innovative practices and founded his movement. Some highlights of his movement was firstly tawhid in its purest form without any traces of shirk (association of others with Allah), opposition to taqlid (blind following of any authority), invocations of saints (one does not need invocation of any living or dead person to seek nearness to Allah or visiting dead sufis’ mausoleums and kissing their graves and praying there).

Thus it would be seen that Sheikh Abdul Wahhab tried to attempt ideological purity of Islam and such a purist Islam, it would be interesting to note can appeal more to desert Arabs which lacked rich and complex cultural traditions. It mainly spread only in these areas and could not attract followers in Iran, Central Asia, India and other parts which had such traditions.

One more factor is important in this respect and that is political. As we all know the colonial period had begun and the Arabs were under domination of Turks and the British had established its foothold over Egypt. There was power struggle in the air. Sheikh Muhammad Abdul Wahhab was acquiring popularity in the Najd region and could influence the local ruler of the region Amir Muhammad bin Saud and this gave political power to the movement. Thus religious appeal of Sheikh Abdul Wahhab and political power of the Saudi family made the Salafi movement a power to be reckoned with.

Slowly the Saudi power increased and it captured whole of Najd, the Karbala and even temporarily Mecca. This began to ring alarming bells in Turkey, Egypt and alerted the British that they may loose hold over the region. Political conspiracies began and Sheikh Abdul Wahab’s movement was labeled as Wahabi movement to give it a bad name. When a religious movement takes resort to political power it also has to face certain political consequences.

However, we do not want to go into political history of the movement, its defeats and victories, neither we want to pass any judgment on its religious merit or otherwise as our main aim is to attempt socio-religious roots of the movement and its appeal or otherwise. Salafi movement, as pointed out, did not arise with political ambitions but with a zeal for ideological purity. Sufism and its various practices were seen as a deviation from pure Islam and as a compromise with its concept of tawhid.

It should also be noted that zeal for ideological purity in any religion or political movement leads to extremism and denunciation of all those who do not agree with them. Also, concept of such purity appeals only to small number of people as in this complex world it is very difficult to ensure such purity. And ordinary people see no great need for such purity as their very existence demands compromises on every step.

Moreover such ideological purity and extremism in its advocacy, besides limiting its appeal, also makes it unsuitable for peasant and non-tribal cultures which tend to be much more complex, ritualistic and dependant on vagaries of nature. Islam could not escape the local hues and traditions of peasant cultures when it spread to these regions. Also, these regions produced much agricultural surplus extracted from peasants which in turn produced a leisurely class consuming this surplus which indulged in creating high culture, philosophy and abstract concepts.

Many Sufis were greatly attracted, like other Muslim intellectuals and philosophers by philosophy of neo-Platonism, and spiritual practices which helped them understand ones inner self. The Muslim ruling classes were engaged in extending and consolidating their rule and thus constantly engaged in warfare which created revulsion among those who were intensely religious.

Thus they withdrew themselves from political Islam and concentrated on spiritual Islam. Thus they became much more tolerant and open to other religions and cultural traditions. Salafis, on the other hand, reversed this trend, gave preference to political Islam and associated themselves with political ruler to survive. Rejection of others leads to isolation and isolation needs external props to survive and need for political support.

Should then hostility continue between Salafis and Sufis? I do not think such a course could be advisable. While the Salafis have to realize that total rejection leads nowhere and only to extremism, the advocates of Sufi Islam should understand that Sufism is much more than mere visiting graves and indulging in charms and amulets. Sufism is nothing if not intense religiosity and spiritualism.

The ideological purity of Salafism and tolerance and inclusiveness of Sufi Islam must be wedded together to make our world more livable. We live today in a multi-religious and multi-cultural world no matter where we live and exclusivistic trends would only lead to extremism. Peace and tolerance is possible only if we accept others rather than reject them. Inter-religious dialogue and understanding will ensure harmonious co-existence whereas extremism will bring nothing but peril for all of us.

King Abdullah has also realized this and has launched initiative to start inter-religious dialogue and organized one in Spain last year. It is a very welcome initiative. We must abandon old positions and adjust to our own realities without compromising of course on fundamental values and principles. Love, compassion and tolerance have enriched all cultures throughout human history and we need these values much more than before.

In India though there is no struggle for power between Barelvis (advocates of Sufi Islam) and Deobandis (advocates of Salafi Islam) but polemics duel continue between them. This leads us nowhere. Coexistence, while respecting each others positions and doctrines, is the only way out. India is a secular democracy and allows full religious freedom and every Muslim sect could subscribe to its own doctrines and dogmas and hence there is no need to denounce the other.

All Muslims, however, must unite to denounce the terrorist and al-Qaeda violence. Killing innocent people is most irreligious act. Only vested interests and those in pursuit of power would encourage such acts, never a religious person for whom religion is a great resource for peace and security of everyone. Let us look inside us and see are we really religious in this sense?

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